Aging-Aware Electric Vehicle Simulation Platform for Battery Charging Strategy Optimization

The constant growth of the electric vehicles market is exposing the open issues related to battery management. One of them is the need for long recharging time compared with the refueling of thermal vehicles. Several fast-charging protocols have been developed and studied in the literature aiming to mitigate this issue. However, fast-charging involves high charging current and determines consistent heat generation, causing detrimental effects on battery health and premature aging of electric vehicle batteries. This paper proposes a simulation platform developed in Matlab-Simulink environment that embeds a vehicle model and a battery model including thermal, electrical, and aging phenomena. The aim is to evaluate the performance of the charging protocols and estimate their effects on battery health in a realistic scenario. A case study was considered to assess the functionalities of the platform. A year of daily usage of an electric vehicle with typical driving and different fast charging profiles was simulated. The results highlight the battery health degradation due to the specific usage profile, charging protocols, and thermal-related issues. Moreover, the results suggest that the proposed platform could serve as a preliminary benchmark in designing optimized fast-charging protocols.