A Rule-Based Energy Management Strategy for a Plug-in Hybrid School Bus Based on a Controller Area Network Bus

This paper presents a rule-based energy management strategy for a plug-in hybrid school bus (PHSB). In order to verify the effectiveness and rationality of the proposed energy management strategy, the powertrain and control models were built with MATLAB/Simulink. The PHSB powertrain model includes an engine model, ISG (integrated started and generator) model, drive motor model, power battery packs model, driver model, and vehicle longitudinal dynamics model. To evaluate the controller area network (CAN) bus performance features such as the bus load, signal hysteresis, and to verify the reliability and real-time performance of the CAN bus multi-node control method, a co-simulation platform was built with CANoe and MATLAB/Simulink. The co-simulation results show that the control strategy can meet the requirements of the PHSB’s dynamic performance. Meanwhile, the charge-depleting mode (CD) and charge-sustaining mode (CS) can switch between each other and maintain a state-of-charge (SoC) of around 30%, indicating that the energy management strategy effectively extends the working period of the CD mode and improves the fuel economy further. The energy consumption per 100 km includes 13.7 L diesel and 10.5 kW·h electricity with an initial SoC of 75%. The CANoe simulation results show that the bus communication performs well without error frames. OPEN ACCESS Energies 2015, 8 5123