Assessment via Simulation of a High-Performance Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Vehicle

This master thesis was developed in POWERTECH Engineering S.R.L., a consulting company that provides CAE simulation services in the automotive field, in collaboration with Aston Martin Lagonda, the well-known sports car manufacturer. This project concerns the feasibility study of the conversion of a high-performance thermal engine vehicle into a fuel cell electric vehicle. The software used for this activity was GT-SUITE, a 1D CFD simulation tool. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the use of fuel cell technology for this type of vehicle, highlighting the main advantages and limitations. The whole activity was carried out keeping under control mainly three aspects: performance, consumption and packaging of the components on board the vehicle. Since it was a high-performance car, the former was the most important constraint due to the need to reduce as much as possible any performance gap with the ICE vehicle. The consumption was estimated, both for the sizing of the hydrogen tank and the estimation of the vehicle's overall range, performed on the WLTP driving cycle. Once the fuel cell vehicle components were sized, they were arranged on board the vehicle, identifying the most suitable spaces to place the fuel cell stack, the hydrogen tank, and the battery pack. Finally, additional analyses were carried out on the battery pack, such as estimating the recharge time, a fundamental aspect of a vehicle of this type. In order to comply with the constraints described above, a trade-off analysis was performed between the maximum performance and the weight of the vehicle, through which three different vehicle configurations were identified. Given the results obtained only one of these options was chosen as the best compromise for a potential continuation of this project.