Optimize EV Battery Performance Using Simulation

In early vehicle design stages, engineers need to make decisions about battery pack sizing. This often involves trade-offs between competing objectives such as EV range and cost, making it difficult to select an optimal design. It requires significant time and modeling expertise to build the closed-loop system-level models needed to evaluate potential designs.

In this talk, we present an accessible workflow to address these pains. We demonstrate how to create a system-level electric vehicle model using the Virtual Vehicle Composer app from Powertrain Blockset™. The model will be used to iteratively evaluate the vehicle’s performance using optimization techniques. The results of this study can then be used in Simscape Battery™ to generate an appropriate battery pack design and evaluate the pack behavior in more detail. This battery model is then integrated back into the system level model for verification against the requirements.

This approach provides a rigorous numerical method to quantify trade-offs in the design problem. It also simplifies the process of model building, both at the system level and battery subsystem level. Domain experts who may not be tool experts can now take advantage of these powerful design workflows.