Real-Time Implementation of an Electric Vehicle Thermal Management System

The importance of the Battery Thermal Management System (BTMS) is paramount within the context of the life cycle and autonomy of hybrid and electric vehicles, considering also the increasing importance of the EV market. In this context, this work explores the feasibility of a real-time application of a BTMS, developed in the Simscape environment by MathWorks. In a previous work, the PID controller originally used by MathWorks was replaced with a much more efficient Model Predictive Controller (MPC). The MPC manages the compressor of the refrigerant cycle and is fundamental in battery temperature management. Within this work, the model was first adapted to a previous MATLAB version (2020b), and various components were completely modified, such as the compressor and the fan. The model was then tested with a proper solver in a fixed time-step before carrying out different real-time simulations. These were conducted using the dSPACE environment with different hardware setups. Simulations were first performed with the whole system uploaded to a single hardware unit and then, by ensuring CAN communication between two different dSPACE hardware units, one was used solely for the controller and the other for the plant. The results were then analysed in this work, comparing them to the offline ones, and considerations on CAN payload and control system computational burden were made. The control system turned out to be feasible, and new developments on the full model (with HVAC) could be carried out in the future.