Reliability Investigation of a Hybrid Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle Powered by Downsized Fuel Cells

Pardis Khayyer, Afshin Izadian and Parviz Famouri

West Virginia University Morgantown, WV 26506 USA

Abstract- Fuel cell electric vehicles are mostly relying on operation of their fuel cell and battery system. Single power source systems use battery units as backup; however, in heavy loads or instances with low State Of Charge (SOC) levels, there is a need for other mechanisms to provide reliable energy for the system. This paper investigates the natural enhanced reliability of operation in an advanced system configuration with two downsized fuel cells. The two fuel cell configuration brings high fuel efficiency by economic load sharing between two fuel cells. The reliability of this system configuration is investigated and compared with conventional designs of hybrid fuel cell vehicles. Keywords: Hybrid Fuel Cell Vehicle, Reliability, Double Fuel Cell.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Recent advancements in fuel cell technology have made them suitable candidates for portable applications and specifically in vehicles. Electric vehicles take the most advantage of fuel cells in different configurations. They bring the advantage of longer driving range compare to battery-powered vehicles and increase the performance of the system by providing fuel-economy configurations. Electric vehicles use fuel cells either as the only source of energy or they are connected to a backup source of power such as battery or ultracapacitors to configure non-hybrid or hybrid fuel cell electric vehicles respectively. Traditional designs of hybrid electric cars utilize a single fuel cell and battery backup. The new configuration of two fuel cell power sources in hybrid fuel cell vehicles was proposed in [1]. Fuel cells were downsized to provide the same amount of power and offered the advantage of a highly fuel economic design. Highly efficient driving conditions in urban applications were obtained. Figure 1 shows the double downsized fuel cell vehicle topology.

overall reliability of fuel cell vehicles. Reliability analysis of a single PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) fuel cell system is studied in [4] and [5]. [6] has focused on the reliability analysis of a single Direct Methanol Fuel Cell. Reliability of a single source fuel cell system highly depends on the operation of the source. Reliability of a fuel cell power source follows the Weibull distribution that decreases over time. This means that an aged fuel system is less reliable. In addition, backup sources such as battery units in electric vehicles are designed for transient operations and cannot provide energy for long time to act as a reliable source. This paper investigates the reliability of operation of a two fuel cell source without considering the contribution of the battery unit since it is designed for a short period of operation. In the following sections, reliability enhancement of a double fuel cell power source is compared with the reliability of traditional designs. The reliability is introduced and used for various system configurations. II. RELIABILITY Reliability by definition is the probability that an item will perform its function adequately for the desired period of time when operated according to specified conditions [7]. Reliability is defined mathematically as

R(t ) = f ( x)dx ,
t

(1)

where f (x) is the failure probability density function and t is the time period. F(t), the cumulative probability distribution function which is also called the failure probability, is defined as
F (t ) =

f ( x)dx

(2)

Figure 1, Double downsized fuel cell vehicle topology

One of the major obstacles in commercialization of fuel cell vehicles is their low reliability of operation [2] which results in a huge reduction in the overall system reliabilities. [2] and [3] have conducted research on

In reliability analysis, it is assumed that the system have the chance to operate without failure during a specific period of time. A fuel cell is a two state device which either operates or fails during its operation. Configuration of components in the system can categorize a network into four distinctive cases of series, parallel, k-out-of-m unit network and standby redundant system. These systems are defined for the convenience of readers.

M. Iskander et al. (eds.), Technological Developments in Education and Automation, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3656-8_89, Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

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A. Series Network If the devices/subsystems of a network are connected in series, it is called a series network. In such network, failure of any of the components leads to failure of the whole system. In the series network, overall reliability of this network consisting of k components is calculated by
R s (t ) = { 1 F1 (t )} { 1 F2 (t )} { 1 F3 (t )}...{ 1 Fk (t )} ,

applications in reliability engineering analysis. Weibull distribution is commonly used for reliability analysis related to PEM fuel cell systems [5]. The hazard rate for the Weibull distribution is defined as,

(t ) = At B .
More details are defined as
(t ) =
t t0
1

(8)

(3)

where Ri (t ) is the ith unit/component reliability and Fi (t ) is the ith component failure probability for i = 1,2,....k and is defined as,

(9)

{1 Fi (t )} Ri (t ) .

where is defined as the shape parameter, is the characteristic life or scale parameter and t 0 is the location parameter. The probability density function of Weibull distribution is expressed as,

(4)

B. Parallel Network If the devices/subsystems of a network are connected in parallel, the network is called a parallel network. This type of system only fails when all its components/subsystems fail to operate; therefore, this configuration is used to increase reliability of the overall system. The reliability of the overall system is calculated by
R p (t ) = 1 Fi (t ) .
i =1 k

t t0 f (t ) =

(10) .

The reliability function is expressed as

t t 0

(5)

R (t ) = e

(11)

C. k-out-of-m Unit Network This type of network contains m units and operates if k parallel units operate. The reliability is defined as
Rk (t ) = (m)[R (t )] [1 R(t )]
i m i =k i m k i

Weibull distribution becomes an exponential case when = 1 (the failure rate is independent of age). In the next section the system reliability analysis for the proposed configuration of multiple fuel cells in hybrid fuel cell vehicle is presented. IV. RELIABILITY ANALYSIS FOR DOUBLE FUEL CELL SYSTEM In this section, reliability analysis of one fuel cell is formulated and is used for analysis of a parallel network. The probability of a single fuel cell is considered 1 at the start of operation and is decreased as time increases. In (11), equals 1 [8] which results in a constant failure rate 1 of = , and t 0 is zero for a brand new fuel cell unit [9]. Figure 2 shows the reliability of individual fuel cells and the resultant parallel network of double power sources for different failure rate values. This figure illustrates a case where failure rate of fuel cell #1 is more than failure rate of fuel cell 2; therefore, the reliability of fuel cell #1 decays faster. This figure also shows an improvement in the overall reliability of the system which is greater than each of fuel cells individually. This demonstrates higher reliability of the multiple fuel cell configuration proposed in this research.

(6)

where R(t ) is the unit reliability, m is the total number of system units and k is the number of units required for the function of the system. D. Standby Redundant System In a standby redundant system, k units are on standby while one unit functions. The system reliability in this case is calculated by
(t ) dt t (i! ) 1 , Rs (t ) = (t ).dt e 0 i =0 0
k i
t

(7)

where is the hazard rate or instantaneous failure rate and is defined as the rate of change of the failed components quantity divided by number of survived components at time t [7]. III. WEIBULL DISTRIBUTION Different distributions such as Weibull, Normal, Exponential Uniform, Extreme value, etc. have

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Simulations indicate that by using the multiple fuel cell configuration not only higher efficiency is gained for the system in urban driving cycles, but also a more reliable system is achieved by implementing the new topology. V. CONCLUSION In this paper the reliability analysis for the new configuration of a double fuel cell vehicle was discussed. The configuration of double fuel cells in hybrid fuel cell vehicles brings the advantage of high efficiency and fuel economic operation while enhancing the reliability of operation in power sources. Results demonstrated that higher reliability was obtained in the system by downsizing the fuel cell power source. REFERENCES
P. Khayyer and P. Famouri, Application of Two Fuel Cells in Hybrid Fuel Cell Vehicles, Powertrains, Fuels and Lubricants Meeting, October 2008, Chicago, IL, USA [2] M. Marchesoni and S. Savio, Reliability Analysis of a Fuel Cell Electric Car. 2005 European Conference on Power Electronics and Applications, 11-14 Sept. 2005. 10 pp. [3] L. Wu and H. Li, H, The Reliability Work in Fuel Cell Vehicles Road Test, IEEE International Conference on Vehicular Electronics and Safety, 2006. ICVES 2006. 13-15 Dec. 2006. pp. 481 484. [4] V. Mangoni, M. Pagano and G. Velotto, Fuel Cell Reliability Model based on Uncertain Data, International Conference on Clean Electrical Power, 2007. ICCEP '07. 21-23 May 2007. pp. 730 735. [5] S. A. Feitelberg,, J. Stathopoulos and Z. Qi, Reliability of Plug Power GenSysTM Fuel Cell Systems, Journal of Power Sources, vol. 147, Issues 1-2, 9 September 2005, pp. 203-207. [6] G. Aydinli, N.S. Sisworahardjo and M.S. Alam, Reliability and Sensitivity Analysis of Low Power Portable Direct Methanol Fuel Cell, The International Conference on "Computer as a Tool"EUROCON, 2007. 9-12 Sept. 2007, pp. 1457 1462. [7] B. S. Dhillon, Reliability Engineering in Systems Design and Operation, Publisher: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company Inc., 1983. [8] K. strm, E. Fontell and S. Virtanen, Reliability analysis and initial requirements for FC systems and stacks, Journal of Power Sources, Volume 171, Issue 1, 19 September 2007, Pages 46-54 [9] Relex Web Page: http://www.relex.com/resources/art/art_weibull3.asp [1]

Figure 2, Each fuel cell and the parallel system reliability curves for

1 > 2

Figure 3 shows the reliability evaluation of fuel cells with the same failure rate values. In this case, both fuel cell reliability curves decay with the same rate; however, the overall reliability of the parallel system is higher than the individual cells.

Figure 3, Each fuel cell and the parallel system reliability curves for

1 = 2