The design of a reference control architecture to support vehicle hybridisation

One means of reducing the development cost of complex mechatronic systems, such as Hybrid Vehicle (HV) powertrains, is to develop a Reference Architecture (RA) that can act as a framework for the design of the vehicle control systems. This paper assesses the validity of an existing RA by testing its use on two different types of HV. It is shown that the RA can be deployed as a design template for a series HV, with extensions only being required to accommodate real-world design details. However, for a parallel HV, the paper demonstrates that a different design philosophy is required for the mechatronic control system. An alternative RA is presented to accommodate the control system requirements for this classification of vehicle.