Battery Performance Analysis for Working Vehicle Applications

In this article, the attention is focused on a specific battery testing methodology for high-power hybrid electric working vehicle applications. Due to the high power demand, a deep knowledge of the battery behaviour is necessary and requires specific testing procedures, different from the standard activities available in the literature for the automotive field. In this article, the attention focused on the power demand that an energy storage system must satisfy to achieve a certain performance, considering this testing approach closer to the real application. A numerical model of a full electric telescopic handler developed in previous works was used to test a LiFePO4 cell in a hardware-in-the-loop bench test configuration. The output voltage-current characteristic was compared with the same output generated by the numerical model of the considered battery. The same model was then tested according to a handling working cycle proposed by the authors for a telescopic handler derived from the experience of the research group in the field of this type of vehicles. This mission profile was then used to evaluate the performance of the proposed battery pack configuration in a real working scenario and at different SoC levels.