Power Distribution System Modeling and Simulation of an Alternative Energy Testbed Vehicle

This thesis deals with the comparison between two powertrain strategies for the Alternative Energy Testbed Vehicle (AETV): a Fuel Cell-Battery (FC-BT) powertrain strategy and a Fuel Cell-Battery-Ultracapacitor (FC-BT-UC) powertrain strategy. In this thesis, a methodology of modeling hybrid vehicle configurations with three energy devices in ADvanced VehIcle SimulatOR (ADVISOR) 2002 was developed. The vehicle models, including the AETV physical model, the AETV Fuel Cell (FC) system, and the power bus of the FC-BT-UC powertrain, were programmed in MATLAB/Simulink. The models were then applied to the simulation and comparison of the powertrain strategies. Large scale simulations were run in order to find the optimized powertrain strategy. The cost function established in the thesis considered the acceleration performance, gradeability, hydrogen consumption, and powertrain cost. According to the cost function, if the AETV is equipped with the components in stock, the FC-BT AETV outperforms the FC-BT-UC AETV.