Optimizing regenerative braking -- a variational calculus approach

L. Q. English; A. Mareno; Xuan-Lin Chen

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arXiv · 2106.14686

Optimizing regenerative braking -- a variational calculus approach

L. Q. English·A. Mareno·Xuan-Lin Chen

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Abstract

We examine some basic physics surrounding regenerative braking and air drag. First, we analyze under what conditions it becomes energetically favorable to use aggressive regenerative braking to reach a lower speed over ``coasting'' where one relies solely on air drag to slow down. We then proceed to reformulate the question as an optimization problem to find the velocity-profile that maximizes battery charge. Making a simplifying assumption on battery-charging efficiency, we formulate the recovered energy as an integral quantity and solve the associated Euler-Lagrange equation to find the optimal braking curve. Using Lagrange-multipliers, we also explore the effect of adding a fixed-displacement constraint.

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L. Q. English, A. Mareno, Xuan-Lin Chen. 2021-06-25. Optimizing regenerative braking -- a variational calculus approach. https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.14686

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