Implementation of comfort constraints in dynamic programming for hybrid vehicle energy management

Optimisation algorithms for hybrid vehicles are used to evaluate embedded strategies and component sizing. Using a quasi-static vehicle model, dynamic programming is commonly used to solve the optimal control problem. Using this type of numerical algorithm yields results that are often incompatible with the purpose of smoothness and driver acceptance. Introducing a comfort criterion in the cost function increases the problem complexity and, therefore, the computational burden. In this paper, a novel suboptimal method is proposed which yields valuable results in terms of performance and computational time. This approach takes occupant comfort into account and thus comes close to a realistic solution.