Khaligh, Dusmex granted patent for plug-in electric vehicle powertrain system

Associate Professor Alireza Khaligh (ECE/ISR) and his former faculty research assistant Serkan Dusmex were granted U.S. Patent 9,878,635 on Jan. 30, 2018 for “Powertrain System in Plug-In Electric Vehicles.”

Khaligh is the director of the Power Electronics, Energy Harvesting and Renewable Energies Laboratory. Dusmex is now a systems engineer at Texas Instruments.

The invention is a powertrain system for plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) that includes one or a number of Energy Storage Sub-Systems (ESSs), and a plurality of Propulsion Machine-Inverter Groups. These are operatively coupled to the ESSs for being powered in accordance with power requirements of the Propulsion Machines (PMs).

Various interface configurations between the ESS(s) and Propulsion Machines are contemplated for the subject powertrain. Some ESSs are coupled to respective PMs (via a common DC Link or a number of independent DC Links) directly, and some through power converters, which may be DC-to-DC, DC-to-AC, AC-to-DC, bi-directional, single input-single output, multiple input-single output, or multiple input-multiple output converters.

A supervisory energy management sub-system cooperates with a maximum efficiency tracker to dynamically control energy distribution in the system based on power requirements of the PMs through control of propulsion inverters and/or power converters to dynamically adjust the power level output by the ESSs to the DC Links' voltage variations.

Published January 30, 2018