Hydrogen Fuel Cell and Ultracapacitor Based Electric Power System Sliding Mode Control: Electric Vehicle Application

Abstract

Control of a perturbed electric power system comprised of a hydrogen fuel cell (HFC), boost and boost/buck DC–DC power converters, and the ultra-capacitor (UC) is considered within an electric vehicle application. A relative degree approach was applied to control the servomotor speed, which is the main controllable load of the electric car. This control is achieved in the presence of the torque disturbances via directly controlling the armature voltage. The direct voltage control was accomplished by controlling the HFC voltage and the UC current in the presence of the model uncertainties. Controlling the HFC and UC current based on the power balance approach eliminated the non-minimum phase property of the DC–DC boost converter. Conventional first order sliding mode controllers (1-SMC) were employed to control the output voltage of the DC–DC boost power converter and the load current of the UC. The current in HFC and the servomotor speed were controlled by the adaptive-gain second order SMC (2-ASMC). The efficiency and robustness of the HFC/UC-based electric power systems controlled by 1-SMC and 2-ASMC were confirmed on a case study of electric car speed control via computer simulations.

Keywords

• hydrogen fuel cell
• electric vehicle
• nonlinear observer and control