Design of a Bidirectional Buck-Boost DC/DC

Converter for a Series Hybrid Electric Vehicle Using

PSCAD/EMTDC
D. R. Northcott S. Filizadeh A. R. Chevrefils
Westward Industries Ltd. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Eng. Manitoba HVDC Research Center
St. Francois Xavier, Canada University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Canada
drnorthcott@westwardindustries.com Winnipeg, Canada adamc@hvdc.ca
sfilizad@ee.umanitoba.ca

Abstract — A process for the design and development of a advantage of design tools such as simulation based
bidirectional buck-boost dc/dc converter for use as a generator optimization is to be presented.
controller in a series hybrid electric vehicle is presented. The
converter allows a single permanent magnet dc (PMDC) electric
machine to be used for both engine starting and generating
modes. The power electronics and the control system Battery
methodology are studied and refined using the PSCAD/EMTDC
+ -
transient simulator as a design tool. Several operation scenarios
are studied using parametric studies. A control system is
developed for which the parameters are selected and optimized DC/DC
IB
using nonlinear simplex simulation based optimization. The PMDC
Converter
Electrical
Engine
converter and optimized control system are tested under a Machine Node
IDCDC
simulated scenario to verify acceptable functionality and IMD
performance.
Motor Drive
Keywords - Electromagnetic transient simulation, hybrid
electric vehicle, modeling, optimization, road-vehicle electric
propulsion.

I. INTRODUCTION PMSM
Drive
A hybrid gas-electric vehicle uses an energy storage device Motor

in concert with an internal combustion engine to provide

propulsion to the vehicle; thereby offering performance and
operational benefits not possible using only a single source of Fig. 1 - Architecture of the series hybrid vehicle under study
energy [1], [2], [3]. In this paper a bidirectional dc/dc converter
will be developed to control power flow between the engine
and the dc bus of a series hybrid electric vehicle whose II. DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS
architecture is shown in Fig. 1. The dc/dc converter must be designed to function within the
In this hybrid architecture the dc/dc converter plays an system detailed in Fig. 1. The required specifications are given
important role in regulating the power flow in the system. The in Table I.
battery bank voltage will vary with the operating conditions of
the vehicle. Since the battery is directly connected to the main TABLE I. DC/DC CONVERTER SPECIFICATIONS
electrical node in the system it will make up the difference of
Voltage Current
current coming from the dc/dc converter and going into the Parameter
specification specification
motor drive as follows: Engine starting mode
Motor-generator output 0 to 40V 0 to 50A
I B = I MD − I DCDC (1) DC bus input 60 to 80V 0 to 50A
Engine generating mode
Although this arrangement saves the cost of a converter at Motor-generator input 60 to 72V 0 to 150A
the battery terminals, the analysis of the dc/dc converter DC bus output 60 to 80V 0 to 100A
operation becomes more complicated and the performance of
its control system becomes more important. A design process
that relies on accurate simulations of the system and takes

978-1-4244-2601-0/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE 1561

 III. THE BIDIRECTIONAL BUCK-BOOST DC/DC CONVERTER
The bidirectional buck-boost dc/dc converter circuit to be
used is shown in Fig. 2. The power electronic switch S1 is used
for boost converting while the switch S2 is used for the buck
conversion mode, where the two modes control power flowing
in opposite directions. In this design, the buck converter mode
is used for engine starting while the boost converter mode is
used to control the electric current from the generator into the
batteries and the motor drive.
Fig. 2 - The bidirectional buck-boost converter
IV. DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
There are a number of practical considerations that have
been made in order to facilitate the selection of components for
the design. The inductor and capacitor should be selected from
commercially available products. Two decisions will be made
from practical considerations at the outset, which are
summarized in Table II. To save on component count and
weight, the armature inductance of the permanent magnet dc
(PMDC) machine will be used as the only inductance, and the
capacitor will be selected from a range of values in [5].
TABLE II. INDUCTOR AND CAPACITOR VALUES
Parameter Voltage Specification
Inductor ‘L’ PMDC armature inductance = 30µH
Capacitor ‘C’ Select from {360µF, 490µF, 600µF, 730µF}
V. CONVERTER DESIGN AND SIMULATION
A simulation case is developed using the PSCAD/EMTDC
transient simulator, which is capable of capturing transient
effects of the converter switching as well as macroscopic
effects from the vehicle drivetrain. Parametric studies will be
undertaken to select the design parameters. Then a closed-loop
controller will be implemented to control the boost operation,
the parameters of which will be tuned using optimization
methods.
A. Selection of the converter switching frequency
The analysis in this section refers to a worst case set of
conditions where the generator voltage is low (i.e. low engine
rpm) and the batteries are also at their lowest state of charge.
The battery bank is modeled using a 60V voltage source with a
0.2Ω internal resistance in order to achieve the specified
maximum converter output condition of 80V, 100A. The
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smallest capacitor of 360µF is used for this analysis, while the
generator is run at 80% of rated speed to produce the worst
case input voltage of 60V. The switching frequency is varied
from 4000Hz to 14000Hz and the duty cycle is adjusted from 0
to 0.5 so that the converter capability can be studied. The dc/dc
converter efficiency plots are shown in Fig. 3.
105
100
Calculated Efficiency (%)
95
90
Increased Switching Frequency
85
80
75
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40 0.45 0.50
Boost Duty Cycle
4kHz 6kHz 8kHz 10kHz 12kHz 14kHz
Fig. 3 - Efficiency versus duty cycle for multiple switching frequencies
The measure of efficiency discussed here is based upon the
simulation program library insulated gate bipolar junction
transistor (IGBT) switch model and parameters, which has not
been further adjusted to model any specific IGBT. Therefore
these numbers are not of significance on their own, but are
useful for relative comparisons between different switching
frequencies and duty cycles.
By analyzing the efficiency plots in Fig. 3 it is noted that
the efficiency declines both as switching frequency is
decreased and as duty cycle is increased. It is also determined
that a higher switching frequency can produce slightly more
output current at the same duty cycle but will create more
dynamic losses, and so there exists a trade-off. From this
analysis it is discovered that with a 10 kHz switching frequency
the duty cycle can be constrained from 0 to 0.4, and the
specified output current of 100A can be achieved with the
efficiency always greater than 95%. Since unnecessarily high
switching frequencies will cause greater switching losses and
result in more waste heat generated, 10 kHz is selected.
B. Selection of the dc link capacitor
The simulation case was run using all the different values
of dc link capacitance given in the specifications. The
unfiltered output voltage was measured and analyzed using a
duty cycle of 0.4, a switching frequency of 10 kHz, and the
minimum generator voltage for each possible capacitance
value. Relative cost, weight, and volume were calculated using
the capacitor specification sheet [5] and are presented in Table
III. Ripple voltage may not be the most important variable for
this decision, but weight and volume reduction are always
important in the alternative vehicle sector, and so the 490µF
capacitor has been selected here.

TABLE III. DC LINK CAPACITOR COMPARISON
Capacitance Ripple
(µF) (Vpk-pk)
360 11.09
490 8.41
600 6.97
730 5.78
C. Buck converter operation
Since the boost converter mode is significantly more
complicated in operation and design than the buck mode, the
design choices made until now have been toward achieving
boost mode specifications. Now it is important to evaluate the
suitability of these choices for engine starting operation using
the buck converter mode of operation. The simulation model is
now modified slightly in order to test against the remaining
specifications in Table I. A voltage source of 60V is applied to
the dc link and a resistor of 0.8Ω is used on the generator side
to achieve the converter engine starting condition of 40V, 50A.
The current on the generator side of the converter is plotted for
a buck duty cycle of 0.68 in Fig. 4. Note that the inductive
nature of a dc motor armature will serve to filter this current,
whereas this test simply uses an ideal 0.8Ω resistor.
Nevertheless these simulation results verify the ability of the
design to achieve the specified 50A starting current.
80
70
Generator Armature Current (A)
60
50
40
30
20
10
0 B. PMDC Generator Model
0 20 40
Fig. 4 - Generator starting current
VI. BOOST MODE CONTROL SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT
Now that the converter has been designed to achieve a set
of maximum operational requirements, the next step is to
design a control system for the boost converter. It will be
important to accurately and responsively control the power
flowing from the engine because of the reasons discussed in
Section I. A control system will be developed for the boost
converter mode of operation which will be tuned and optimized
using the simulation case.
A. High Level Design
The boost converter shall control the power flow from the
engine to the main dc bus, and hence the batteries by varying
its duty cycle. While maintaining the desired power flow is
important, there are a few additional problems to avoid during
operation, such as battery over-voltage, which may damage
devices on the dc bus, and converter over-current, which could
cause the converter to damage itself. For these reasons, a three
Relative Relative Relative variable control scheme is devised to limit or control the output
cost weight volume voltage, output current, and output power as shown in Fig. 5.
1.00 1.00 1.00
1.19 1.11 1.24
1.39 1.33 1.49
1.59 1.44 1.75
Fig. 5 – Boost converter control system block diagram
For this scheme, the voltage controller will be set to the safe
maximum battery voltage, the current controller will be set to
the safe maximum converter current, and the power controller
will be varied as required by the vehicle control scheme. For all
three of these control modes, an increase in duty cycle will
cause an increase to the control variables. Because of this fact,
the minimum block will automatically activate the controller
with the lowest output, thereby respecting the upper limits of
voltage, current, and the present power set point.
Under this scheme, the power control mode will be active
under normal conditions, but when the vehicle is under hard
acceleration or regenerative braking, the current controller or
the voltage controller may take over momentarily to prevent an
undesired over-current or over-voltage condition. The control
system will now be implemented in simulation and connected
to the boost converter in PSCAD/EMTDC. Initially, the
controllers will be connected and optimized individually before
all three are connected via the minimum block and tested
together as a complete system.
60 80 100 120 140
Time (uS) For the control system development, a PMDC machine will
Igen (Filtered) Igen be modeled by using the standard library dc machine model
from PSCAD/EMTDC. This machine will represent the
generator used to drive the input voltage for the boost
converter. Since the standard dc motor model has a field
winding, and a PMDC machine does not, the field circuit will
be fixed in such a way to achieve the open circuit voltage vs.
rotational speed characteristic of the PMDC motor to be used
[7]. The PSCAD circuit diagram is shown in Fig. 6.
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Fig. 6 – Modeling a PMDC generator using the standard PSCAD dc machine
model
The rotor speed is fixed at 80% rotational speed
(corresponding to 2880 rpm). Under this arrangement the
simulation model will account for the transients in the electrical
circuit, but neglect the dynamics in the mechanical system. It is
assumed that the constant power control scheme and the fast
response of the converter will effectively isolate the engine
from any transients that are slow enough to affect the high
inertia mechanical system for the studies being undertaken
here. Therefore a mechanical model will not be implemented.
The armature resistance and inductance for the model are
adjusted to match values provided by the motor manufacturer.
C. Boost Converter Linearization
As mentioned earlier, the selected boost converter topology
exhibits a nonlinear voltage response. The formula relating the
voltage boost factor to the duty cycle [6] is given as:
Vout 1
= (2)
Vin 1 − D
Fig. 7 - Buck-boost dc/dc converter optimization circuit
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This can be linearized by first passing the PI output through
the following characteristic before sending it on to the gate
driver:
DNL
DL = (3)
DNL + 1
Where DNL is the non-linearized duty cycle from the PI
controller and DL is the duty cycle which will linearize the
response of the converter for the PI controller’s efforts. This
will make tuning the PI controller easier and should allow
improved controller performance.
D. Voltage Controller Implementation and Tuning
Voltage control is implemented in PSCAD using the
standard PI control block. A simple voltage source and resistor
model is used to represent the battery bank. Several PI
parameters are chosen intuitively, using a trial and error
process, until the system begins to converge after a set point
bump test. This will set up the initial conditions to be improved
upon during the optimization process. The PSCAD circuit
diagram for the system under study is shown in Fig. 7. The
variables to be controlled will be the output voltage, known as
Vout, and the load current, which can represent the variable
power consumed by the drive motor to accelerate the vehicle.
Now it is necessary to develop an optimization strategy by
which the performance of the control system can be analyzed.
The system will undergo a short test cycle whereby the
controller set point is adjusted suddenly, and then the load
current is adjusted a short time later. The controller’s ability to
react to these two stresses will be used by the optimization
routine to choose better PI control tuning parameters. The test
schedule is summarized in Table IV.
 120 0.4

0.35
100
TABLE IV. VOLTAGE CONTROLLER OPTIMIZATION TEST CYCLE 0.3

Time (ms) Voltage set point (V) Load current (A) 80 0.25

Objective Values
0 75 0

P, I Values
0.2
25 65 0 60
35 65 65 0.15

40 0.1

0.05
100
20
0
90
0 -0.05
80
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
70 Trial #

Objective P I
60
Voltage (V)

50 Fig. 10 - Optimization progress for voltage controller

40

30
100
20
90
10
80
0
70
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0.045 0.05
Time (s) 60
Voltage (V)
VoutSetpoint Vout
50

Fig. 8 - Voltage control results with initial parameters 40

30

The performance of the controller using initial parameters 20

is shown in Fig. 8. As can be seen, the controller has some 10

oscillatory performance from the set point change, and is also 0

affected by the load change at 35ms. The initial overshoot will 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0.045 0.05
Time (s)
be ignored as it is mainly a consequence of the initialization of
VoutSetpoint Vout
the simulation. Any normal system startup would gently ramp
the set point from the existing dc bus conditions. Fig. 11 - Optimized voltage controller performance
The objective function for the optimization will scale and As seen in Fig. 10, the optimization eventually converges
accumulate control loop error from 10ms to 50ms. Through toward a better set of parameters for the system. Fig. 11 shows
multiple trials the optimization will successively and the new tuning parameters in action. It is up to the designer to
automatically (i.e. without designer intervention) improve the decide if this result is acceptable, or if additional optimizations
performance by adjusting the P and I variables until a chosen should be run after changing the objective function, modifying
tolerance has been reached [8]. The Simplex Optimum Run the control scheme, or using different initial parameters.
control block is configured as shown in Fig. 9.
The same optimization procedure is run for the current and
power controllers. Each time, the optimization routine produces
a better set of parameters by using the initial guess that is
determined interactively.

E. Full Control System Evaluation

Fig. 9 - Simplex optimum run configuration
The objective function for this optimization is simply the
square of the controller error. Squaring the error is done to
make all errors positive for the accumulator and can also be
shown to speed the convergence of the optimization.
A test strategy is developed to vary the output power set
point and the load current in such a way to test all three control
modes when they are used in a combined control system. The
voltage and current set points are fixed to the maximum desired
voltage and current, while the power set point and the load
current undergo quickly ramped changes during the test. This
test schedule is summarized in Table V.

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TABLE V. CONTROL SYSTEM TEST SCHEDULE
Load
Time
Current set point
0 ms 40 A
200 ms 40 A
350 ms -100 A
120
100
Voltage (V), Current (A)
80
60
40
20
Power Mode
0 0
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20
Iout
Fig. 12 - Results of the test simulation
As detailed in Fig. 12, the system initially operates in
power control mode, then enters current control mode when the
power set point is increased toward 8 kW. This is because
under this condition, 8 kW is not achievable without violating
the current limit of 100A. Then at approximately 0.35s the
system enters voltage control mode when a large amount of
current is injected into the battery from the external source,
which simulates a heavy regenerative braking condition. The
duty cycle must be cut back dramatically in order to keep the
voltage at the 90V maximum.
As can be seen from the data, controller overshoot on the
order of 10% for a short time can be expected from this control
scheme. This is because the PI controllers do not have
integrator ramp-up limiting, and as a result there exists an
adjustment period between mode transitions. This can either be
made acceptable by ensuring a safety margin in the set point, or
through some additional modification and tuning of the control
scheme. A possible solution could involve back-calculating and
setting the integrator of the PI controller upon the transition
between control modes.
VII. CONCLUSIONS
A process for the design and development of a bidirectional
dc/dc converter as a module for a series hybrid vehicle was
presented. An electromagnetic transient simulation model was
developed using PSCAD/EMTDC to study several transient
and steady-state operation characteristics during the design
process. In boost mode, the possible effects of switching
frequency and duty cycle on the maximum current output and
converter efficiency were studied. The effects of different dc
link capacitor values on the output ripple voltage were also
evaluated and several design decisions were made based on this
information. The acceptable operation of the system was
verified in buck mode in order to allow for starting the engine
Pout Iout Vout by using the generator as a motor. Finally, a closed loop control
system was formulated and the parameters were optimized to
set point set point
5 kW 100 A 90 V improve some system performance metrics. The converter and
8 kW 100 A 90 V control system were simulated using a simple battery model
8 kW 100 A 90 V and current source to test the functionality of the developed
control scheme.
10
9
REFERENCES
8
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overview of hybrid electric and fuel cell vehicular power system
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Hybrid Electric Vehicles”, IEEE International Symposium on Industrial
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[8] M. Gole, S. Filizadeh, P. L. Wilson, R. W. Menzies, "Optimization-
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D. R. Northcott (M’06) received his B.Sc. and M.Sc.
degrees in electrical engineering from the University of
Manitoba in 2005 and 2007 respectively. He is currently
working for Westward Industries as an Electrical Design
Engineer developing a series hybrid GO-4 parking patrol
vehicle. His areas of interest include power electronics, digital
control systems, and hybrid electric vehicles.
S. Filizadeh (M'05) received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees
in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology
in 1996 and 1998, respectively. In 2004, he obtained his Ph.D.
degree in electrical engineering from the University of
Manitoba, where he currently is an assistant professor. His
areas of interest include transient simulation of power systems,
power electronics, hybrid and electric drives and nonlinear
optimization. Dr. Filizadeh is a registered professional engineer
(P. Eng.) in the province of Manitoba.
A. R. Chevrefils (M’05) received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from
the University of Manitoba in 2005 and 2008 respectively. He
is currently working for the Manitoba HVDC Research Center.
His areas of interest are power systems, power electronics,
simulation, and control.
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