Combined Optimal Sizing and Control for a Hybrid Tracked Vehicle

The optimal sizing and control of a hybrid tracked vehicle is presented and solved in this paper. A driving schedule obtained from field tests is used to represent typical tracked vehicle operations. Dynamics of the diesel engine-permanent magnetic AC synchronous generator set, the lithium-ion battery pack, and the power split between them are modeled and validated through experiments. Two coupled optimizations, one for the plant parameters, forming the outer optimization loop and one for the control strategy, forming the inner optimization loop, are used to achieve minimum fuel consumption under the selected driving schedule. The dynamic programming technique is applied to find the optimal controller in the inner loop while the component parameters are optimized iteratively in the outer loop. The results are analyzed, and the relationship between the key parameters is observed to keep the optimal sizing and control simultaneously.