Fuel economy improvement for fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles using fuzzy logic-based power distribution control

This paper presents a new type of fuzzy logic-based power control strategy for fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles designed to improve their fuel economy while maintaining the battery's state of charge. Since fuel cell systems have inherent limitations, such as a slow response time and low fuel efficiency, especially in the low power region, a battery system is typically used to assist them. To maximize the advantages of this hybrid type of configuration, a power distribution control strategy is required for the two power sources: the fuel cell system and the battery system. The required fuel cell power is procured using fuzzy rules based on the vehicle driving status and the battery status. In order to show the validity and effectiveness of the proposed power control strategy, simulations are performed using a mid-size vehicle for three types of standard drive cycle. First, the fuzzy logic-based power control strategy is shown to improves the fuel economy compared with the static power control strategy. Second, the robustness of the proposed power control strategy is verified against several variations in system parameters.