Optimization of an aftermarket control system designed for the electrification of vintage vehicles originally powered by an internal combustion engine

A retrofit kit is a system that allows the conversion of an internal combustion engine vehicle into a full electric one. This thesis work aims to further develop a custom algorithm for a vehicle control unit, which is part of a conversion kit to be installed on vintage cars. In particular, the development of the functionalities related to the powertrain control module (PCM) is addressed. The algorithm is developed using the LabVIEW environment and is tested according to the model-based design approach. In the first section, the requirement analysis of the PCM algorithm is carried out and its first implementation is proposed. The developed functionalities include the throttle mapping, the torque output control of an inverter, the execution of vehicle-management features through a state machine, the recharging phase management, and fault handling. Subsequently, the main components of the powertrain of the vehicle are modeled according to the available data and are used to perform a model-in-the-loop testing phase, in which the functionality of the PCM is demonstrated. The second section seeks to make the algorithm compatible with the Miracle2 fast-prototyping platform, integrating CAN communication capabilities together with strategies to manage the transmission of the messages to the available hardware. A processor-in-the-loop testing phase is performed to establish the algorithm performance on the real-time target and to validate the implemented CAN algorithm.