An energy management strategy for fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle based on a real-time model predictive control and pontryagin’s maximum principle

In order to maintain the battery SOC, the fuel cell power will fluctuate dramatically, as well as frequent start-stop, which will greatly increase the life attenuation of the fuel cell and reduce the durability. An optimization-based energy management strategy with a real-time model predictive control and pontryagin's maximum principle for FCHEV is proposed in this paper, both the fuel economy and the fuel cell durability are considered in the optimization. A novel model predictive control is studied to achieve energy distribution. After the calculation of predicted speed sequence through back propagation neural network, pontryagin's maximum principle is introduced to solve the optimal control problem in each prediction horizon and obtain the ideal control strategy. In addition, the fuel cell degradation model is introduced in the modeling process, the minimum power point of the fuel cell system is designed to improve the fuel economy and durability of the fuel cell. Compared with the rule-based strategy, the proposed MPC strategy has better performance to reduce the total equivalent hydrogen consumption, which can save up to 8.44% in the test case of the mid-size fuel cell passenger car while maintaining the stability of the battery's state of charge.