Fuzzy Logic Control of a Fuel Cell/Ultra-capacitor Hybrid Vehicular Power System

Fuel cell (FC) and ultra-capacitor (UC) based hybrid power systems appear to be very promising in order to satisfy high energy and high power requirements for vehicular applications. The improvement of control strategies for hybrid vehicular power systems is very important for dynamic response under various load conditions. In this study, a full bridge DC/DC power converter is used to control power flow from the FC to the drive-train, while a bidirectional DC/DC converter is employed for the UC bank. We focus on a novel fuzzy logic control algorithm integrated into the power conditioning unit (PCU) for FC/UC hybrid vehicular power systems. The control strategy is capable of determining the desired FC power and keeps the DC voltage around its nominal value by supplying propulsion power and recuperating breaking energy. Simulation results obtained using MATLABreg & Simulinkreg, SimPowerSystemsreg, fuzzy logic toolbox and ADVISORreg are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm