Research On The Control System For Vehicular PEM Fuel Cell Engines

With growing concerns about the issues of environmental pollution, energyshortages and climate change, proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC)vehicles draw much attention from governments and the automotive industry withadvantages of high efficiency, fuel saving and zero emission. Vehicular PEMFCsystem is an essential component of PEMFC vehicles. How to design the controlsystem in order to achieve stable operation of the fuel cell is the main problem of thisthesis. This thesis focused on the vehicular PEMFC engine control system. Based ona distributed controller network architecture, the hardware platform and softwareplatform of the fuel cell engine control system, the fuel cell system modeling andcontrol algorithm, as well as experimental verification has been researched. Acomplete set of fuel cell control system was built and experimental validation wasaccomplished.This thesis has completed the hardware design of the master controller based on32-bit microcontroller MPC5644A as the digital core, and of the slave controllerbased on16-bit microcontroller MC9S12XEP100as well as Infineon TLE6209aselectric throttle driver. The software of the master controller was designed based on afully automatic code generation technology. The control algorithm and hardwaredrives could be both developed in Matlab/Simulink environment, converted intoexecutable code by Real Time Workshop, complied, linked and downloaded to thecontroller by Codewarrior IDE. In addition, this thesis also designed the software forthe slave controller and the CAN communication protocols of the fuel cell controlsystem. Moreover, modelling of the PEMFC engine has been studied, and the controlalgorithm of the engine was designed, including the start-stop logic and state switch,cooling systems control, air control system, hydrogen system control, fault diagnosisand fault-tolerant control sub-modules. Each sub-module has been separatelydebugged, before integrated and verified as an entire control algorithm module. A fuelcell test bench for vehicular fuel cell engines was established. The function of thecontrol system was verified, and preliminary calibration was carried out on the fuel cell engine. This thesis also carried out a flow chart analysis based on the efficiencyof each part of the fuel cell engine system.The fuel cell engine control system was able to meet the requirements andensure stable operation of the fuel cell engine. This thesis laid the foundation for theoptimization of the subsequent fuel cell engine system.