Master of Science Thesis Work – Implementation of Battery Management Unit

QRtech has a long history within the field of automotive electronics and software. QRtech has in a number of projects developed Electronic Control Units (ECUs) to vehicles for more than 20 years. Today QRtech is a leading contract development supplier of ECUs and a development partner to number of vehicle manufacturers.

Presently a lot of effort is spent on development of hybrid vehicles. Typically such vehicles have one conventional engine and one electrical engine, together with a generator and battery system. Battery management is important because the battery status must be known and managed to achieve the desired advantages. Thus the battery needs to be controlled by an intelligent Battery Management Unit (BMU) which co-operates with the other electronic control systems in the vehicle. Major tasks of a BMU are to monitor the state of charge and handle the aspects of the high voltage present in hybrid batteries, typically 300 VDC.

The task of the Thesis Work is to develop a BMU which is dependable and cost efficient. The major difficulties in the work are algorithms for state of charge, and organization of the fault tolerance in order to achieve dependability and cost efficiency at the levels required by the automotive industry.

The work consists of:
• Studies concerning hybrid vechicles
• Studies of different battery technologies
• Studies of battery charging algorithms
• Studies of fault tolerance techniques
• Design and development of a demonstration BMU

The required skill and interest covers control algorithms, machine oriented programming of embedded control systems based on single chip computers, electronics development and PC-programming. Practical experience of electronics is of great value. Two Master of Science Diploma workers are needed for this work and their skill and interest might overlap or complement. The work is to be started in September 2006.

Please send your application together with a description of yourself and your marks as soon as possible to [email protected].

Contacts at QRtech are:

Ronald Hedström
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 031-7737603

Lars-Åke Johansson
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 031-773 76 00