Method for multi-criteria and mission-specific component dimensioning for heavy-duty fuel cell trucks

Abstract

Heavy-duty fuel cell trucks are a promising approach to reduce the CO₂ emissions of logistic fleets. Due to their higher powertrain energy density in comparison to battery-electric trucks, they are especially suited for long-haul applications while transporting high payloads. Despite these great advantages, the fleet integration of such vehicles is made difficult due to high costs and limited performance in thermally critical environmental conditions. These challenges are addressed in the European Union (EU) funded project ESCALATE, which aims to demonstrate high-efficiency zero-emission heavy-duty vehicle (zHDV) powertrains that provide a range of 800 km without refueling or recharging. Powertrain components and their corresponding thermal components account for a large part of the production costs. For vehicle users, higher costs are only acceptable if a significantly higher benefit can be achieved. Therefore, it is important to size these components for the actual vehicle mission to avoid oversizing. In this paper, an optimization method, which determines the optimum component sizes for a given mission scenario under consideration of multiple criteria (e.g. costs, performance, and range), is presented.