Monitoring and simulation of fuel cell electric vehicles

The objective of this research is to develop a fuel cell hydrogen vehicle model (FC-RVS) and validate it with existing black-box models and with real on-board data. On-board data for dynamic profile, topography and fuel consumption was collected in the city of Porto in the framework of the hydrogen bus demonstration project CUTE (Clean Urban Transport for Europe). The vehicle used is part of a fleet of 27 urban buses developed and built by Evobus and uses a fuel cell based non-hybrid propulsion system. The data collected in Porto reflects a very demanding drive cycle that resulted in the availability of data for several operating conditions. The fuel cell vehicle is modelled by using efficiency maps of each powertrain component. Trough a backward approach the power requested is transformed in hydrogen consumption. Finally, optimized configurations to achieve the lowest hydrogen consumption possible are analyzed, including hybridization. FC-RVS model predictions were within 4% of measured results.