2017 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference (ITEC-India)

A Novel Configuration of Regenerative Braking System to

improve the Energy efficiency of an Electric Vehicle with Dual-
Stator Dual-Rotor BLDC motor
B. V. Ravi Kumar1,2,a , K Sivakumar1,b , S.Karunanidhi2
1Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH), India.
2Research Centre Imarat, DRDO, India.

E-mail: avenkataravi.kumar@rcilab.in, aee14resch01007@iith.ac.in, bksiva@iith.ac.in

Abstract— Electric propulsion for vehicles is gaining importance effective method of electric brake with energy regeneration in
day by day making it right choice for future transportation including electric vehicles is presented in [7].Switched winding BLDC
rail, road and airways. The major drawback of Electric vehicle is the motor is proposed to improve the energy efficiency of electric
energy efficiency, which need to be improved in par with gasoline vehicle [8] by switching the windings of the motor as per
engine to make them economically viable solution for transportation. acceleration requirements.
In the similar lines, this paper proposes a novel configuration of
Regenerative Braking System (RBS) to improve the energy
This paper proposes a novel Regenerative braking system
efficiency of Electric vehicle with a Dual-stator Dual-rotor BLDC (RBS) with Dual Stator Dual rotor (DS-DR) BLDC motor.
motor. Complete mathematical modeling and simulation of electric The Complete model of the vehicle is developed with
vehicle is carried out with the proposed configuration and all the proposed configuration and simulated using
performance indices of the vehicle are derived. The results are very MATLAB/SIMULINK. Important performance indices of the
encouraging showing an increment of range by 75% for same battery vehicle are derived and compared with conventional
pack compared to conventional configuration. configuration and shown a considerable increment in battery
energy saving and the range of the vehicle.
Index Terms- Electric propulsion, Electric vehicle, Regenerative
braking, Energy efficiency, BLDC motor. II. PROPOSED REGENERATIVE BRAKING SYSTEM (RBS)
I. INTRODUCTION A. General Configuration:
Fig. 1 shows the general RBS configuration with BLDC
Energy Efficient Electric vehicles (EV) are need of motor. The application considered in this paper is an in- wheel
the day and are best choice as mode of transportation. Whole drive which employs the motor as a Hub motor directly
world is looking at EVs as an alternate to gasoline engines to coupled to the wheel without any transmission mechanism. In
save the planet from pollution and enforcement toward propulsion mode, the motor is in traction mode delivering
production of EV is getting serious. Improvement of energy power to the wheel and vehicle will be moving with required
efficiency of electric vehicle is challenging area to researchers velocity and acceleration. When the brake input comes from
and lot of work is being done at international level. One of the the pedal sensor, the control mode will be in regenerative
popular ways for improvement of energy saving in EV is braking where the motor will be in generator mode and the
regenerative braking system (RBS) which can enhance the rotational energy stored in the wheels will be converted to
EVs driving range by 8-25% [1]-[2]. RBS replaced the electrical energy and charges the battery through rectifier and
traditional braking system, which utilizes mechanical friction DC-DC converter.
method to dissipate kinetic energy as heat energy for efficient
stopping of vehicle. In Start-stop driving conditions specially
in Urban driving, about half of the energy required by vehicle
is consumed during braking [3].This situation is best utilized
with RBS implementation which converts the kinetic energy
developed during the motion of the vehicle to charge the
battery during braking. The Braking effectiveness can be
enhanced by employing flywheel, which is an inertia energy
storage device, however it suffers with drawbacks like more
space, limited mechanical strength etc.[4].Hybrid power
system based regenerative braking system is proposed which
increases the efficiency of EV, enhances the useful capacity of
battery and reduce the charging/discharging current of battery
[5].
The literature also reported on regenerative braking control
strategy, which provides the braking force distribution Fig. 1. General configuration of RBS in an EV
between mechanical and regenerative braking [6]. Cost

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 2017 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference (ITEC-India)

B. Proposed Configuration:
The proposed RBS configuration employs DS-DR BLDC
motor. The DS-DR motor is employed with two stators and
two rotors in the same housing and both stators can be
operated independently with different speeds.Fig.2 shows the
2-D view and assembly of DS-DR motor with two stators and
two rotors. The outer rotor of the motors is directly coupled
with help of a coupler to the wheel of the EV and inner rotor is
not connected to any load. The assembly of DS-DR motor
with wheel is shown in fig.3.

Fig.4. Proposed configuration of RBS with DS-DR BLDC motor

Fig.2. 2-D view and assembly Diagram of DS-DR BLDC motor

Fig.5. Power flow during motoring and braking

During motoring, the inner motor is also powered on which

Fig.3. Assembly of DS-DR drive with wheel
The RBS configuration with DS-DR BLDC motor is given
in fig.4. In propulsion mode, the motor is in motoring mode-
delivering power to the wheel through the outer rotor and
stator. In this mode, the inner stator is also powered on and
inner rotor will be rotating without connected to any load.
During this mode vehicle will be moving with required
velocity and acceleration. When the brake input comes from
the pedal sensor, the control mode will be in regenerative
braking where the rotational energy stored in the wheels and
energy stored in inner rotor will be converted to electrical
energy and charges the battery through rectifier and DC-DC
converter. The same is shown as power flow diagram during
motoring and braking of the vehicle in fig.5.
take current from the battery but it is only no- load current,
and is very less compared to load current. During acceleration,
to overcome the inner-rotor inertia, peak current will be drawn
for very less time of the order of milli sec, which is also, very
less compared to vehicle linear acceleration, which has to take
care by the outer rotor. The inner motor can be driven at any
speed dictated by its stator back-emf constant, this is used to
run the inner motor at high speed so that the rotational energy
stored will be larger and can be utilized as regenerative during
braking of the vehicle. Hence, energy stored in both outer
rotor and inner rotor is used for regenerative braking to
enhance the energy flow into the battery.
B.1. Modeling and Simulation results:
Electric vehicle model employs different sub systems
like transmission model, vehicle model, Electric motor model,
controller model and Battery model. Total vehicle
performance is arrived by modeling all the sub systems.

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 2017 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference (ITEC-India)

The major performance indices like range of the vehicle,
battery depth of discharge, power consumed by battery are
derived and compared with conventional RBS. The complete
model is developed in MATLAB/SIMULINK and is shown in
fig.6(a).Standard driving schedule ECE-15 is used for
simulation is shown in fig.6(b).
Fig.7 shows the power consumption of battery for the ECE-15
driving cycle. Comparison of power consumption for both
conventional and proposed configuration shows that during
deceleration the regenerative braking is more effective in
proposed scheme.
B.1.2. Depth of Discharge (DOD) of Battery and Range of
the Vehicle

Fig.8 (a) DOD of battery for repeated driving cycles

Fig.6 (a). Developed Simulation model

ECE-15 Duty cycle

50

40
V e lo c ity ( k m p h )

30

20

10

-10
20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
time (sec)
Fig.6 (b). Standard Driving schedule Fig.8 (b). Range of vehicle for repeated driving cycles

B.1.1Power consumed by Battery: The DOD of battery is the indication of its capacity.
The value of DOD is zero if battery is fully charged and it is
said to be dead when if value of DOD is one. Fig. 8(a) shows
the comparison of DOD for conventional and proposed
configurations for 27 repeated driving cycles of ECE-15.It can
be seen that for same number of driving cycles, the battery is
discharged in case of conventional configuration while there is
42% of charge remaining with proposed configuration. The
range of vehicle depends on charge available in the battery.
The battery depth of discharge is plotted with distance
travelled for both configurations and is shown in fig.8 (b) and
it can be seen that range of vehicle is 13.7Km with
conventional configuration and it is increased to 24Km with
proposed configuration when simulated with repeated ECE-15
driving schedule with same Battery pack.
Fig.7. Battery power consumption for one ECE-15 driving cycle

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 2017 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference (ITEC-India)

III. CONCLUSION
A novel Regenerative Braking System (RBS) with Dual
stator-Dual Rotor (DS-DR) BLDC motor is proposed to
improve the energy efficiency of an Electric vehicle (EV).The
Configuration of RBS and construction of DS-DR BLDC is
presented in detail. The complete mathematical model of In-
wheel Electric vehicle is developed including all sub systems
with proposed RBS with DS-DR BLDC. Simulation is carried
out to arrive at important performance indices like DOD of
battery and range of vehicle. The results show that there is an
increment of 75% in the range of the vehicle with proposed
configuration compared to conventional. Hence, the proposed
configuration of RBS can be employed in EVs to improve the
energy efficiency there by increasing their mileage.
IV. REFERENCES
[1] B Cao, C Zhang, B Zhifeng, " Trend of Development of
Technology for Electric Vehicles" Journal of Xi'an Jiatong
University, vol.38,no.1,pp.1-5, 2004.
[2] Z.B.Binngang Cao,"Research on Control of Regenerative
Braking of Electric vehicle", IEEE,pp.92-97,2005.
[3] Y Gao, L Chen, M Ehsani," Investigation of the effectiveness of
Regenerative Braking for EV and HEV",SAE International SP-
1466. 1999-01-2910,1999.
[4] J.Dixon,"Energy Storage for Electric Vehicles". Industrial
Technology (ICIT) 2010 IEEE international conference,pp.20-
26,2010.
[5] X Nian, F Peng, H Zhang, "Regenerative Braking System of
Electric vehicle Driven by Brushless DC motor", IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Electronics", Vol.61, Issue.10,
Oct.2014.
[6] F Wang, X Yin, H Luo, Y Huang , " A Series Regenerative
Braking Control strategy Based on Hybrid-Power", International
Conference on Computer Distributed Control and Intelligent
Environmental Monitoring, 05 April 2012.
[7] M-Ji Yang, H-Lin Jhou, B-Yen Ma, K-Kai Shyu, " A Cost-
Effective Method of Electric Brake with Energy Regeneration
for Electric vehicles" IEEE Transactions on Industrial
Electronics, Vol.56, Issue 6, June 2009.
[8] B V Ravi Kumar, K Siva Kumar, " Design of new switched-
stator BLDC drive to improve the energy efficiency of an
electric vehicle" , IEEE International conference on Industrial
Technology (ICIT), 22-25 March 2017.

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