Investigation on the Influence of Clutches on the EVT-Based HEV Powertrain by Efficient DP-PMP

This article studies the influence of additional clutches on the fuel-saving performance of a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) with a double-rotor electrical variable transmission (EVT). One clutch (C1) is introduced on the engine shaft to fix it to the ground, which enables two extra pure electric driving modes. The other (C2) is placed between the two rotors of the EVT to connect them together, resulting in the parallel hybrid and engine directly driving mode. To compare with the no-clutch EVT powertrain, a computationally efficient optimization framework, which combines dynamic programming (DP) and Pontryagin’s minimum principle (PMP), is employed to search the optimal fuel economy and mode controls under 15 various driving cycles. A bi-level formulation, containing a lower level that solves the underlying static optimization problems of components operation in combined driving modes and an upper level minimizes the Hamiltonian values, is incorporated into the optimization framework to further decrease the computation burden. The comparative analysis on three EVT powertrains, one without any clutches, one with two clutches, and one with only C1, demonstrates that C1 could gain at most 5.66% of fuel saving under urban cycles, while the contribution of C2 is trivial to whichever driving conditions.