Hardware in the Loop Testing of an Urban Electric Vehicle Model Supplied with Supercapacitors

Designing and optimization of electric vehicles based on powerful computations, requires complex simulation models and modern analysis approaches. Software developers create tools able to perform highly accurate and reliable simulations, however concentrated on types of assemblies of the entire vehicle. Attempting to simulate a full vehicle using a single software, generally leads to many difficulties and non-reliable results. Co-simulations can solve partially this problem with the cost of very long simulation times using powerful computers. The present paper offers a solution to this issue, based on an integration software (National Instruments VeriStand), running online on a real-time target (PXI computer). VeriStand can link into one real-time simulation vehicle assemblies with models created in different software packages. Even more, it is possible to run the interconnected models and at the same time to output/input quantities from real hardware. In this philosophy, the urban electric vehicle model is created in Amesim software, specialized in electrical and mechanical designs. A ultracapacitors supplied urban electrical vehicle is modelled and simulated following this approach. The vehicle is simulated offline in Amesim environment and the output data is used in a real-time simulation to test the Simulink model of the supercapacitors in parallel with the operation of the real hardware.