Electrification Virtual Seminar

The presentation will include a brief context about converter-dominated dc microgrids, focusing on the challenges that have arisen in terms of low-level control and stability. A use case example will be then provided to illustrate how Speedgoat HIL devices can be employed to design and to validate dc-dc converter control strategies in close-to-real conditions. In this use case, a custom low-level control deployed into a Texas Instruments F28379D developer kit will be employed to control a four-switch Buck-Boost converter implemented in the HIL platform. The converter will be subjected to different load current profiles to ensure the validity of the designed controller dynamically. 

Large systems such as airplanes and ships are facing big challenges in assessing, sizing, and testing the integration of electric components such as batteries, motors, and power converters. Building prototypes of an airplane, ship, or rail power grid is rarely an option, and engineers need to rely on simulations and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing. This session addresses the challenges of onboard power systems by presenting a fully electric ship micro-grid architecture both in desktop simulation and HIL testing of an embedded propulsion controller. For the live demo, we have implemented an industry reference architecture from the Electric Ship Research & Development Consortium (ESRDC): a two-zone medium voltage (MV) DC electrical architecture.

A HIL-platform to validate the control and diagnosis algorithms will be presented. The platform is based on a real-time target machine (including a IO333-410k Simulink Programmable FPGA I/O Module) and a commercial traction control unit from CAF P&A. 
The project has been carried out in collaboration with CAF P&A. The presentation will show the multiple applications of the platform, and the advantages of the HIL simulations in order to reduce the errors in the last step of control design. This platform can be used for diagnosis purposes, as validation of fault diagnosis algorithms, and for control algorithms, in order to validate the algorithms in an early phase of the design.

From laptops and smartphones, through hybrid and electric vehicles, to renewable energy systems and power transmission and distribution, our life has changed enormously in the last few decades. A key factor is the development of power electronics. However, with progress comes challenges that need to be addressed by the research and development community in a short period of time. The goal of this presentation is to discuss how Simscape Electrical™ can help solve these challenges through modeling and simulation of power electronics at a variety of different levels of fidelity. The talk will include relevant case studies covering device analysis, control, and real-time simulation.

Electrified powertrain control engineers design controllers for battery packs, power electronics, and electric motors. For system integration, it is essential to combine models from different engineering teams into a single system-level simulation for closed-loop testing. In this session, learn how to build a controller that can be prototyped and validated against a hardware-in-the-loop simulation of the full vehicle. You’ll see how you can go beyond software-only simulation to find bugs in production controllers utilizing a safe virtual environment.

Highlights:

• Validate different system-level vehicle architectures using Model-Based Design
• Validate controllers using rapid control prototyping
• Test the prototyped controllers/ECUs against a real-time hardware-in-the-loop simulation of the electrified powertrain

This session provides a summary of how to develop electrical systems using Model-Based Design and how you can leverage Speedgoat real-time solutions to facilitate the development, testing and validation of your innovations with hardware prototypes: from controlling and tuning a high-voltage DC converter to verifying the operation of an actual grid-tied inverter against a virtual power grid.