A Novel Torque Coordination Control Strategy of a Single-Shaft Parallel Hybrid Electric Vehicle Based on Model Predictive Control

The torque coordination control during mode transition is a very important task for hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) with a clutch serving as the key enabling actuator element. Poor coordination will deteriorate the drivability of the driver and lead to excessive wearing to the clutch friction plates. In this paper, a novel torque coordination control strategy for a single-shaft parallel hybrid electric vehicle is presented to coordinate the motor torque, engine torque, and clutch torque so that the seamless mode switching can be achieved. Different to the existing model predictive control (MPC) methods, only one model predictive controller is needed and the clutch torque is taken as an optimized variable rather than a known parameter. Furthermore, the successful idea of model reference control (MRC) is also used for reference to generate the set-point signal required by MPC. The parameter sensitivity is studied for better performance of the proposed model predictive controller. The simulation results validate that the proposed novel torque coordination control strategy has less vehicle jerk, less torque interruption, and smaller clutch frictional losses, compared with the baseline method. In addition, the sensitivity and adaptiveness of the proposed novel torque coordination control strategy are evaluated.