A Design Methodology for Optimizing Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle Architecture

This paper introduces a decision support methodology for designing and optimizing interleaved boost converters in the context of fuel cell electric vehicles. It employs interleaved techniques to minimize fuel cell current ripple, improve system efficiency, and address weight and size issues, while also enhancing flexibility and modularity within the converter. The methodology integrates a multi-objective optimization approach to achieve an optimal power architecture that offers balanced volume reduction and efficiency enhancements for a certain power level. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the optimization process in achieving an optimal balance between volume reduction and efficiency improvement for different number of switching cells which is the key modular parameter of the converter.