Development of a Hybrid Electric Vehicle Simulation Tool with a Rule-Based Topology

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The subject of the work is very topical -concerns the control of hybrid electric vehicles. It will surely be interest to wide range of readers. The simulation tools used in the design of hybrid vehicle drives are discussed in detail. The basic architectures of hybrid drives and the various simulation hybrid tools used so far are given. The Author present his own universal simulation tool developed on Matlab and Simulink to address HEV technologies. Proposed rule - based control strategies for serial (six modes of operation), parallel (7 different operating modes) and serial/parallel (nine operating modes) take into account e.g. new European driving cycle (NEDC), WLTC, real driving emission (RDE) etc. The optimization toolbox lets to use a universal global searching (GS) algorithm. The simulation results for a typical passenger car are of great value. Some simulation results have been experimentally verified , e.g. simulated engine torque and CO2 emissions are in good agreement with those of experimental results.

Detailed comments: - eq. 7 and 9: give the integraion variable "dt"? 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

I would like to thank the reviewer for careful and thorough reading of this manuscript and for the right comment, which help to improve the quality of this manuscript. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to submit a revised draft of the manuscript. I appreciate the time and effort that the reviewer dedicated to providing feedback on my manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comment. The manuscript has been checked by a native English-speaking colleague and I have incorporated the suggestion made by the reviewer.

Detailed comments: - eq. 7 and 9: give the integraion variable "dt"?

Yes, you are right. Since the tool is mainly using vehicle test on driving cycles (WLTC, NEDC, RDE FTP and etc.) based on time, it will be more clear by giving the variation “dt”. Thanks for your comment and the manuscript has been updated – line Nr.175 and 177.

Best regards,

Hyun Woo WON

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Please help create performance comparison table with previously published papers.

The discussed matter is interesting but the implemented solutions are largely known and the Author does neither clarify the elements of novelties of this article nor how/where these latter are present.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to submit a revised draft of the manuscript. I appreciate the time and effort that the reviewer dedicated to providing feedback on my manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments.

- Please help create performance comparison table with previously published papers.

Sorry I am not very clear about “performance” whether you are asking about the performance of HEV results or the publications. I guess you want to see the HEV performance improvement by my HEV tool compared to other HEV simulation tools. Most hybrid vehicle simulation tools do not share the principle and control logic algorithm in open literature. So, I can compare directly the previous HEV simulation tools. In preliminary study, I have got similar level of CO2 results using my simulation tool compared to the results with the different HEV simulation software (my company has HEV licenses for GT-suite, Simcenter AmeSim, IAV HEV tool and Autonomie).

As I mentioned in the manuscript, “the major advantage of this tool is enhanced flexibility to choose different control and energy management strategies enabling the user to explore wide range of hybrid topologies. The tool provides the user to modify any sub-system according to one’s requirement” line Nr. 17−19 . If my answer is not enough for your comments, please give some additional explanation about the comments how I can improve my manuscript.

- The discussed matter is interesting but the implemented solutions are largely known and the Author does neither clarify the elements of novelties of this article nor how/where these latter are present.

I would like to thank the reviewer for careful and thorough reading of this manuscript and for the thoughtful comments and constructive suggestions. The present tool is an open source solution. As a consequence it is free of cost and provides the flexibility to the user to look into the source code. So, the tool allows us to mitigate the cost incurred in buying commercial simulation tools like the communal HEV simulation software (GT-suite, Simcenter AmeSim, IAV HEV tool and Autonomie).

As it mentioned in the manuscript “the author introduces a simple logic control for rule-base strategy as an example to show the flexibility of the tool in adapting any logic algorithm by the user” – line Nr. 20 −21. The developed tool can mainly be used to address the HEV results (fuel and energy consumption and performance and so on) based on the selected technologies (e.g., advances ICE, electric devices and battery package for HEV) within understanding of the control logic. As I did, I expect that the user can develop the own control logic based on selection of hardware and driving conditions. From my know-how and experiences collaborating with many OEMs, whatever the HEV developers have some knowledge of the technologies (electric device and powertrain), most of them doesn’t have clear picture of technical positioning on HEV. Most OEMs simply play with size of electric device to admit the regulation rather than optimizing the variable hardware. This is the main purpose of tool development to provide details regarding modeling principle and control logic. Same thing, if my answer is not enough for your comments, please give some additional explanation about the comments how I can improve my manuscript.

Best regards,

Hyun Woo WON

Author Response File: Author Response.docx