Energy-Optimal Braking Control Using a Double-Layer Scheme for Trajectory Planning and Tracking of Connected Electric Vehicles

Abstract Most researches focus on the regenerative braking system design in vehicle components control and braking torque distribution, few combine the connected vehicle technologies into braking velocity planning. If the braking intention is accessed by the vehicle-to-everything communication, the electric vehicles (EVs) could plan the braking velocity for recovering more vehicle kinetic energy. Therefore, this paper presents an energy-optimal braking strategy (EOBS) to improve the energy efficiency of EVs with the consideration of shared braking intention. First, a double-layer control scheme is formulated. In the upper-layer, an energy-optimal braking problem with accessed braking intention is formulated and solved by the distance-based dynamic programming algorithm, which could derive the energy-optimal braking trajectory. In the lower-layer, the nonlinear time-varying vehicle longitudinal dynamics is transformed to the linear time-varying system, then an efficient model predictive controller is designed and solved by quadratic programming algorithm to track the original energy-optimal braking trajectory while ensuring braking comfort and safety. Several simulations are conducted by jointing MATLAB and CarSim, the results demonstrated the proposed EOBS achieves prominent regeneration energy improvement than the regular constant deceleration braking strategy. Finally, the energy-optimal braking mechanism of EVs is investigated based on the analysis of braking deceleration, battery charging power, and motor efficiency, which could be a guide to real-time control.