A Novel Method for Idle-Stop-Start Control of Micro Hybrid Construction Equipment—Part B: A Real-Time Comparative Study

Abstract

Micro hybrid propulsion (MHP) technologies have emerged as promising solutions for minimisation of fuel consumption and pollutant emissions of off-highway construction machines (OHCMs). Their performance and economic feasibility strongly depend on the way they utilize the idle-stop-start control (ISSC) concept. The ISSC design process and performance evaluation are particularly challenging due to the peculiar structures and dynamics of OHCMs compared to other vehicles and, therefore, require significant development time and efforts. This paper is the second of a two-part study focusing on prediction-based idle-start-stop control (PISSC) for micro hybrid OHCMs. In part A, the powertrain model and the procedure to design the PISSC system have been presented. The PISSC-based engine control performance has been investigated through numerical simulations with the designed model. In this Part B, a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test platform is established in HIL Control Laboratory for the rapid validation of the proposed technique in terms of the fuel/pollutant emission saving in real-time. First, the powertrain architecture and PISSC algorithm presented in Part A are briefly reviewed. Second, the process to build the HIL test platform is clearly stated. Third, experiments and analysis are carried out for a number of comparative studies to validate the superiority and practical applicability of the PISSC approach.

Keywords

• construction machine
• hybridization
• idle-stop-start
• hardware-in-the-loop
• real-time