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hybrid vehicle, EM 1401 EVM, TIDA-00239

Dear all,

As part of a master thesis in  (mechanical ) engineering sciences at the katholic University of Leuven (Belgium), I am currently involved in the design and construction of a modular hybrid car platform. The aim of this platform is to develop a platform on which various configurations of batteries and motors can be combined to simulate and develop hybrid and electic powertrains. This project is financed and supported by the Belgian Company Punch Powertrain. 

In the current design we will use a HV dc bus, connected to a ~350V dc battery consisting of 112  3.3V LiFePO4 cells. Power requirement are estimated to reach 30kW continous up to 70kW peak power, resulting in currents up to 100 (continous) to 200 A (peak). All cells are connect in series.

For the battery management design i'm currently exploring several options including the active balancing design from Ti. I have however some small questions concerning the design:

  • What is the difference between the EM 1401 EVM en  TIDA-00239 module (the first being an 'evaluation module' the last one being a 'reference design', i am however not familiar with TI  terminology) . I noticed that the used TI-components are identical ?
  • To improve the SOC estimation We plan to impliment a extended Kalman Filter, based on individual cell voltage and pack current. If it is impossible to run this filter on this board (which I assume to be the case), this will run on a seperate Can controller. Is it possible to access the measured cell-voltages of either of the models true the can system and /or direct the cell balancing from a seperate controller ?
  • As far as software is concerned, is the C-code provide with the module or can everything be controlled from the graphic user interface ?
  • Is cell balancing between modules possible ?
  • Does TI give a form of academic discount on its components ?

I hope to here from you soon.

yours sincerely,

Steven De Bruyn

  • Hi Steven,

    TIDA-00239 provides a test report and design information of the EM1401EVM solution. 

    The EM1401EVM has a MCU on the board, and so it could be programmed as you wish, including an SoC algorithm. Unfortunately, TI cannot provide the source code for the EM1401EVM as it ships.

    You could however, just send CAN commands from a central pack controller of your own design to get cell and temperature measurements, and control balancing. The GUI just sends CAN commands based on the user selection and display cell measurements. The GUI is otherwise dumb.

    I am not aware of any academic discount, but you try contacting a local TI sales rep to find out if samples are possible.

    Regards,

    Stephen

  • Hey stephen

    Thanks again for the reply (I don't know whether you got my email-reply to your reaction) .

    In the meantime we decided to continue with the ti em1401EVM, before we order however, I would like to confirm again if the module will also work with (LiFePO4) battery cells (as it mentions mostly Li-ion on the website). In my previous post I already mentioned this battery chemistry, but just in case you missed it I would like to make sure.

    Normally this should not be a problem I think as it is only adapting limit values.

    Thanks for the help

    Steven

  • Yes, there is no issue with supporting LiFePO4 cells.

    Please be aware, you will also need to order a VSCom USB-CAN adapter (www.vscom.de/vscom-usb-can.html) to be able ti use our GUI with the board. You can find the VSCom distributor contact for Belgium on the VSCom website.