Interview with UBFC
“It’s really cool to have the European Open Data policy,” says Dr. Fei Gao, professor at the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard. “The PANDA project is a perfect example of how EU funding helps to initiate new ideas and new results.” In a previous project back to 2017, Gao worked with other colleagues with the French post office to design a fuel cell vehicle, the Mobypost. “In PANDA we use the data from that project to develop the models and the connectivity. This continuity really comes from the EU requirement of open data from the previous project.”
In PANDA Gao and his colleagues developed accurate models for fuel cell vehicles. The results show that the simulations are accurate to within 2% maximum relative error for the DC/DC converter, and to within 5% for the battery. The simulations are a very efficient tool for the design and testing, which is very helpful to reduce development costs.
“For us, the connectivity is really important,” Gao explains. “For example, we are not experts on the design of electric motors. Thanks to the PANDA approach, we can easily insert more accurate motor models from e-motor experts. That gives us the freedom to test more detailed models and see the behaviour more accurately.” The Mobypost, a high-end mail delivery vehicle, is commercially available on the market. “The results from our analysis from PANDA will feed back into a new design for more advanced controls in the vehicle.”
PANDA is also a bridge to new developments. “A future project can be a truck, or a ship. We have a French project on fuel cell scooters, and we use the PANDA platform and experience to do the design. With the help from Typhoon HIL we can now test our models in a hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) setup. Before we needed to build an entire experimental test bench. Now we don’t need to do that, which is faster and saves a lot of costs.”
The results on the Mobypost are reported in D4.4*. “Our report is public, and it will help other people to see what we can do using PANDA approach. Fuel cell technology is a main focus now in Europe, it will give everyone new ideas.”
Figure: FCV Mobypost powertrain structure [Ravey 2014]
*D4.4 – Report on the virtual testing of the FCV [UBFC – Jan 2021]
This report will provide the simulation results of the virtual testing of the studied Fuel Cell Vehicle of UBFC using the PANDA methodology.
To read the whole report: Part 1 (chapters 1-3) + Part 2 (chapters 4-7).