Hydraulic hybrid vehicle (HHV) is a new technology being developed in order to improve fuel economy for road vehicles. This technology also has limitations for example: low energy density, no power grid plug-in capability. This research is on the evaluation of a new concept for improving the HHV technology. With an added air system to HHV, the air system can be charged through grid plug-in or by the internal combustion engine (ICE). The new scheme has the potential to significantly improve the energy density of the hydraulic hybrid vehicles and also provide plug-in capability for these vehicles.
Basing on a symbolic program developed in MATLAB/Simulink, a parallel hybrid simulation model for the new system is developed in this thesis. The simulation model includes all the system components such as the vehicle, the air tank, the accumulators, the pressure exchangers, the hydraulic pump/motor, the compressor and the ICE. The power management is implemented based on using all the available hydraulic power. The main objective of this model is to evaluate the average fuel economy (FE) for the HHV with the added compressed-air system. This model is tested basing on the federal urban drive schedule (FUDS). The simulations results with various configurations have not shown significant improvement in the fuel economy. This thesis provides a detailed analysis about the results from the system structure and the energy loss. In this system, there are two alternating accumulators. Every time the accumulator switches to reservoir, energy will be lost. When the engine drives the compressor to recharge the air system, a large engine would be needed to power such a compressor. These are the main reasons for the poor fuel economy of the proposed HHV system.