Battery management systems face an increasingly complex plethora of additional tasks that needs to be solved as battery technology evolves and a large amount of data becomes available from fleet operational data. Some of these challenges are:

• Ageing prediction
• Health Monitoring
• Ageing-aware charging and power split strategies.
• Thermal Management

In order to tackle these, accurate modelling of the battery pack and correct state of charge estimation is required, with a varying degree of complexity depending on battery chemistry, temperature and so on. Additionally, for hybrid electric vehicles, power split strategies that considers both battery and fuel cell degradation and operating limits are vital for the extension of the useful lifetime of such vehicles.

Ageing Prediction Modelling

The goal here is to create a model which predicts the battery degradation given a certain usage pattern. In order to create these models, a large amount of ageing data is required, where data from different batteries tested in parallel, with several different load profiles, is gathered. Different methods on how to create these models are available in literature, from electrochemical approaches to machine learning solutions. Also, given the high monetary cost in running these tests, it is relevant to design them in a way such that the model is obtained with a good quality and testing is kept to a minimum.

Health Monitoring

In order to take the necessary corrective maintenance steps and replace the battery when needed, it is necessary to have a methodology that enables the tracking of the battery health over-time, in a real time fashion. Since usually these methods require an accurate state-of-charge signal, adequate current-voltage models for the batteries are required, especially for chemistries with a flat OCV curve.  

Power Split and Thermal Management

For hybrid fuel-cell electric vehicles, where the motive power is provided by either a fuel cell or the battery, optimal power allocation of vital importance. A trade-off strategy was developed in order to operate both the battery and the fuel cell in a way that the efficiency is maximized, while respecting operational constraints on both sides, together with a cooling strategy that keeps the battery temperatures in a desired range.

Publications

de Oliveira, Jose Genario, Cisel Aras, Pankaj Pallewar, Mohammad Charkhgard, Thyagesh Sivaraman, and Christoph Hametner. "A two-step identification approach for an extended nonlinear double-capacitor model., opens an external URL in a new window" Heliyon 10, no. 18 (2024).

Vrlić, Martin, Dominik Pernsteiner, Alexander Schirrer, Christoph Hametner, and Stefan Jakubek. "Reduced-dimensionality nonlinear distributed-parameter observer for fuel cell systems, opens an external URL in a new window" Energy Reports 10 (2023): 1-14.

Kölbl, Julian, Alessandro Ferrara, and Christoph Hametner. "Impact of Energy Management Strategy Calibration on Component Degradation and Fuel Economy of Heavy-Duty Fuel Cell Vehicles, opens an external URL in a new window" IFAC-PapersOnLine 55, no. 24 (2022): 317-322.

Ferrara, Alessandro, Matthias Hütter, and Christoph Hametner. "Adaptive Energy Management Strategy to Avoid Battery Temperature Peaks in Fuel Cell Electric Trucks, opens an external URL in a new window" IFAC-PapersOnLine 55, no. 24 (2022): 311-316.

Büyüker, Banu Ç., Alessandro Ferrara, and Christoph Hametner. "Predictive Battery Cooling in Heavy-Duty Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles, opens an external URL in a new window" IFAC-PapersOnLine 55, no. 24 (2022): 304-310.

de Oliveira Jr, Jose Genario, Cisel Aras, Thyagesh Sivaraman, and Christoph Hametner. "Lithium-ion Cell Ageing Prediction with Automated Feature Extraction, opens an external URL in a new window" IFAC-PapersOnLine 55, no. 24 (2022): 203-208.

de Oliveira Jr, Jose Genario, Vipul Dhingra, and Christoph Hametner. "Feature Extraction, Ageing Modelling and Information Analysis of a Large-Scale Battery Ageing Experiment, opens an external URL in a new window" Energies 14, no. 17 (2021): 5295.

Hametner, Christoph, Stefan Jakubek, and Wenzel Prochazka. "Data-driven design of a cascaded observer for battery state of health estimation, opens an external URL in a new window" IEEE Transactions on industry applications 54, no. 6 (2018): 6258-6266.

Hametner, Christoph, Markus Kneissl, and Markus Dohr. "Nonlinear system identification based on nonuniformly sampled data for battery state of health estimation, opens an external URL in a new window" (2018).

Hametner, Christoph, Bernhard Brunnsteiner, and Wenzel Prochazka. "Identification of capacity-loss prediction models of lithium-ion batteries, opens an external URL in a new window" In Proceedings of 7th International Symposium on Energy. 2017.

Research Projects at our Institute

• CDL Battery Emulation
• CDL Battery Research
• FC4HD

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