Design and Experimental Validation of a Scaled Test Bench for the Emulation of a Hybrid Fuel Cell Powertrain for Agricultural Tractors

Hybrid fuel cell powertrains are a promising strategy to reduce the environmental impact of vehicles and non-road mobile machinery. To preserve the state-of-health of fuel cells, an energy storage system with sufficient power capacity, such as ultra-capacitors or batteries, should be introduced in the system to help the fuel cell during sudden and abrupt changes in power demands. However, the presence of two or more energy sources necessitates the development of an energy management strategy. The energy management strategy should properly split the power request between the different energy sources. In this paper, the design and the experimental validation of a scaled test bench for the emulation of a fuel cell/battery powertrain for a vehicular application is presented. The fuel cell is emulated through an analogically controlled DC power source that reproduces its real voltage–current curve. To split the power between the emulated fuel cell and the batteries, controlled DC-DC is used and a simple energy management strategy based on a proportional-integral controller is developed. The external load is reproduced using a load unit composed of a programmable electronic load and a power supply. Experimental tests are performed to evaluate the system behaviour and to characterize its main components. The experimental results show that the system successfully emulates the powertrain in accordance with the proposed energy management strategy.