Fuel cell as Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL)

The consistent demand for improving products working in a real-time environment is increasing, given the rise in system complexity and urge to constantly optimize the system. One such problem faced by the component supplier is to ensure their product viability under various conditions. Suppliers are at times dependent on the client’s hardware to perform full system level testing and verify own product behaviour under real circumstances. This slows down the development cycle due to dependency on client’s hardware, complexity and safety risks involved with real hardware. Moreover, in the expanding market serving multiple clients with different requirements can be challenging. This is also one of the challenges faced by HyMove, who are the manufacturer of Hydrogen fuel cells module (https://www.hymove.nl/).
To match this expectation, it starts with understanding the component behaviour. Hardware in the loop (HIL) is a technique used in development and testing of the real-time systems across various engineering domain. It is a virtual simulation testing method, where a virtual simulation environment, that mimics real-world scenarios, around the physical hardware component is created, allowing for a detailed evaluation of the system’s behaviour. These methods play a vital role in assessing the functionality, robustness and reliability of systems before their deployment. Testing in a controlled environment helps understand system’s behaviour, identify potential issues, reduce risk, refine controls and accelerate the development cycle. The goal is to incorporate the fuel cell system in HIL environment to understand it’s potential in various real-time scenarios for hybrid drivelines and suggest secondary power source sizing, to consolidate appropriate hybridization ratio, along with optimizing the driveline controls.
As this is a concept with wider application, this proposal is seen as the starting point for more follow-up research. To this end, a student project is already carried out on steering column as HIL

Eindrapportage

Hardware in the Loop (HIL) is a tool to understand the behavior of a hardware (in this case a fuel cell) by creating a virtual real-time environment that allows for an in-depth analysis without the need for a complete physical set up. It can accelerate the development cycle by detecting the problems at an early stage and helps with fine-tuning before final validation on a full scale hardware system.

The virtual environment is simulated in dSPACE using Mirco AutoBox II. The industrial partner (HyMove) involved in the project develops fuel cells for a city bus application having a hybrid driveline, hence a fuel cell hybrid driveline model in Simulink is developed for the same. The model is validated with the test data from the HyMove's bus. When validating the fuel cell model with the test data it was found that the fuel cell used in the bus does not operates to its full potential. Two main factors where found to be responsible for its under-performance. First being the aging of the fuel cell and second being the sub-optimal humidification of the fuel cell membrane. With optimal humidification the efficiency of the fuel cell would rise by 4-6%. This was a major outcome that could have immediate benefits with minimal efforts. During the project, another EMS using Genetic Algorithm optimization was developed in Simulink. It was found the proposed EMS could further enhance the efficiency by almost 4%.

Due to the bankruptcy of the involved partner, HIL set-up was developed with a smaller fuel cell, so it was tested on limited scenarios. However, all the necessary building blocks required to prove the concept were developed and the basic functionality of the concept is proven.