Comparative Analysis of Protection Systems for DC Power Distribution in Electrified Vehicles 2022-01-0135

Electric transportation has the potential of mitigating CO2 emissions and reduce fuel needs. One of the challenges for the growth of this industry is limited range and efficiency of the vehicles associated with battery storage systems and electric drive technology. High voltage systems are expected to increase efficiency and then vehicle mileage, however this increases the severity of the fault conditions, especially in case of short circuit. Melting fuse is commonly used for the purpose of protection in electrified vehicles, while it is effective and reliable, there are several shortcomings such as lack of precision, effect of ambient temperature, bulky, interruption time depending on the fault condition etc. Additionally, the on-board DC power distribution system (PDS) is characterized by low impedance, in this environment fuses are not able to limit the fault current leading to damage of electronics and hazard for the battery pack. Thus, advanced protection systems such as pyro-fuses and solid-state circuit breakers (SSCB) are being considered by the industry since they are expected to reduce space, weight, fault-current interruption time and power loss of the protection mechanism by a significant factor. This paper seeks to perform a detailed comparative analysis of protection systems for a DC PDS based on various metrics including fault clearing time, cycling performance, power loss, temperature effect, size etc. The data used for the analysis is gathered from state-of-the-art commercially available devices and dynamic models developed using MATLAB Simulink.