Hybrid Modeling and Predictive Control of the Power Split and Gear Shift in Hybrid Electric Vehicles

In this paper a hybrid model predictive control (HMPC) strategy for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) is proposed for joint optimization of the power split control between the engine and the electric motor together with the gear shift control. A switched affine system is introduced to represent the vehicle dynamics under different gear ratios. The nonlinear engine characteristics are described by a piecewise affine system. The HMPC problem is then formulated as a mixed integer quadratic programming problem. Simulation results show that the developed strategy can not only decrease the total fuel consumption compared to a rule-based strategy, but can also be applied online.