Development of an Electric Vehicle Hardware-in-the-Loop Emulation Platform

Hardware-in-the-loop emulation allows for rapid testing of new control algorithms and hardware components without the need for a full vehicle prototype. This paper outlines an electric vehicle emulation platform consisting of hardware and simulation components carefully integrated together in order to emulate the operation of the vehicle’s powertrain. The main hardware components of the platform are two AC synchronous induction motors and their inverters/controllers, a rotary torque sensor, a battery pack, a programmable DC power supply, and a programmable DC load. The simulation components consist of a real-time data acquisition system with a control design and modeling interface. The control structure consists of speed and torque control mode selections for the two motors, vehicle and driver simulation models, as well as a feedforward component that improved the operation of the emulation platform during a typical EV drive cycle.