OPTIMIZATION OF ENERGY-EFFICIENT SPEED PROFILE FOR ELECTRIFIED VEHICLES

This paper presents a study of energy-efficient operation of vehicles with electrified powertrains leveraging route information, such as road grades, to adjust the speed trajectory. First, Pontryagin's Maximum Principle (PMP) is applied to derive necessary conditions and to determine the possible operating modes. The analysis shows that only 5 modes are required to achieve minimum energy consumption; full propulsion, cruising, coasting, full regeneration, and full regeneration with conventional braking. The minimum energy consumption problem is reformulated and solved in the distance domain using Dynamic Programming to optimize speed profiles. A case study is shown for a light weight military robot including road grades. For this system, a tradeoff between energy consumption and trip time was found. The optimal cycle uses 20% less energy for the same trip duration, or could reduce the travel time by 14% with the same energy consumption compared to the baseline operation.