A Comparative Study of Energy Management Schemes for a Fuel-Cell Hybrid Emergency Power System of More-Electric Aircraft

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative analysis of different energy management schemes for a fuel-cell-based emergency power system of a more-electric aircraft. The fuel-cell hybrid system considered in this paper consists of fuel cells, lithium-ion batteries, and supercapacitors, along with associated dc/dc and dc/ac converters. The energy management schemes addressed are state of the art and are most commonly used energy management techniques in fuel-cell vehicle applications, and they include the following: the state machine control strategy, the rule-based fuzzy logic strategy, the classical proportional-integral control strategy, the frequency decoupling/fuzzy logic control strategy, and the equivalent consumption minimization strategy. The main criteria for performance comparison are the hydrogen consumption, the state of charges of the batteries/supercapacitors, and the overall system efficiency. Moreover, the stresses on each energy source, which impact their life cycle, are measured using a new approach based on the wavelet transform of their instantaneous power. A simulation model and an experimental test bench are developed to validate all analysis and performances.