Design optimization of the control system for the powertrain of an electric vehicle: A cyber-physical system approach

By leveraging the interaction between the physical and the computation worlds, cyber-physical systems provide the capability of augmenting the available design space in several application domains, possibly improving the quality of the final design. In this paper, we propose a new, optimization-based methodology for the co-design of the gear ratio and the active damping controller of the powertrain system in an electric vehicle. Our goal is to explore the trade-off between vehicle acceleration performance and drivability. Using a platform-based approach, we first define the system architecture, the requirements, and quality metrics of interest. Then, we formulate the design problem for the powertrain control system as an optimization problem, and propose a procedure to derive an optimal system sizing, by relying on the simulation of the vehicle performance for a set of driving scenarios. Optimization results show that the driveline control performance can be substantially improved with respect to conventional solutions, using the proposed methodology. This further highlights the relevance and effectiveness of a cyber-physical system approach to system design across the boundary between plant architecture and control law.