A Novel Concept to Control the Powertrain in Battery Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicles

This paper presents a novel concept to control the powertrain in battery fuel cell hybrid vehicles. Instead of a DC/DC converter, a simple power electronic switch is connected between the battery and the fuel cell system. For this, the electronic switch has to work in linear operation for several seconds during the switch-on and switch-off process. Because of the extreme switching loads, several semiconductors are connected in parallel and the individual currents are measured and balanced by a microprocessor control circuit. The paper ends with the practical use of the power electronic switch in the test bench to replicate the drive train operation of battery-fuel cell hybrid vehicles.