Guest Editorial Special Section on Advanced Modeling, Simulation, Control, and Optimization Paradigms for Vehicular Power Systems

ENVIRONMENTAL concerns, public policies and mandates, and the rising interest of private sectors have significantly accelerated the electrification of transportation fleets. Numerical simulation and optimization are essential to mimic the actual hardware and minimize hardware design iterations and retrofits. Truly functional virtual/computational prototyping environments are indispensable tools in the automotive industry and highly depend on the availability of accurate and efficient modeling, simulation, control, and optimization tools. Dynamic models are required to study the large signal timedomain transients and small signal frequency-domain stability. Dynamic model development and controller design are also needed for stability assessment and for meeting performance objectives. The main objective of this Special Section is to provide timely solutions for emerging technical challenges in modeling, simulation, control, and optimization of automotive power and propulsion structures. This Special Section covers device-, component-, circuit-, and system-level issues for energy storage, power electronics, and electromechanical energy converters in hybrid (HEV), plug-in hybrid (PHEV), fuel cell, and electric vehicles (EVs). It includes papers in the areas of converter topologies for HEVs, modeling of storage systems, energy management of EVs in a grid, and charging management and storage units in PHEVs. We had 26 high-quality papers submitted to this Special Section; unfortunately, we could only accept nine papers due to space limitations. A brief discussion of each paper is presented here. The paper “Comprehensive Efficiency, Weight, and Volume Comparison of SiC and Si-Based Bidirectional DC– DC Converters for Hybrid Electric Vehicles” by Sarlioglu et al. studies different combinations of silicon-based and siliconcarbide switches, i.e., different combinations of active and passive switches such as MOSFET/insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) and diodes, using a bidirectional dc–dc converter as a benchmark. Three sets of device combinations, i.e., allsilicon (conventional silicon IGBTs and silicon p-n diodes), hybrid (silicon IGBTs with SiC Schottky diodes), and all-SiC devices (SiC MOSFETs with SiC Schottky diodes), are considered. These converters are evaluated from efficiency, weight, and volume perspectives. Volume reduction in power converters can lead to better space utilization, and weight reduction yields