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This paper investigates the design of a two-layer energy-management system for a fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle (HEV). The first layer (upper layer) deals with the vehicle energy consumption, whereas the second layer (lower layer) deals with the power splitting between the fuel cell and the battery. The upper layer aims at providing the globally optimal energy consumption profile by considering the road-trip information and the vehicle dynamics. This energy profile is independent of the number and type of power sources on the vehicle. Therefore, it can be used to assist the real-time power splitting algorithm implemented into the lower layer. This layer design goal is mainly to share the vehicle power demand between the fuel cell and the battery while minimizing the hydrogen consumption. In addition, the splitting method takes into account the fuel cell efficiency map and the hydrogen/electricity relative pricing while imposing a smooth behavior on the fuel cell. This smooth behavior is desirable to preserve the fuel cell life and reduce the oxygen starvation phenomenon. The proposed energy-management system has been successfully implemented and validated on an HEV test bench. The experiments and simulations using several standard driving cycles suggest that the approach can reduce the hydrogen consumption up to 10% compared to a rule-based method and a depleting-sustaining method while preserving at the same time the battery pack from overdischarging. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]