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Fuzzy controlled fast charging system for lithium-ion batteries

Conference Paper · December 2009

DOI: 10.1109/PEDS.2009.5385724 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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Fuzzy Controlled Fast Charging System for Lithium-
Ion Batteries
Ming-Wang Cheng Shih-Ming Wang
Applied Science and Eng. Dept. of Electronic Eng.
Institute Fu Jen Catholic University
Fu Jen Catholic University Taipei, Taiwan
Taipei, Taiwan 496506080@mail.fju.edu.t
m.w.cheng@hotmail.com w 002877@mail.fju.edu.tw
Abstract—A DSP is adopted to construct a fuzzy controlled
lithium-ion battery charging system. By using this intelligent
charging system, the data collection, calculation and peripheral
circuit control are performed for the battery charging status.
According to the lithium-ion battery charging specifications, two
hours are required for battery charging. A fuzzy logic controller
(FLC) is constructed by using the battery protection cell voltage
and voltage difference among the batteries. They are used as the
input variable to shorten the charging and equalizing time and
assure that the battery will be operated within the safety voltage
range.
Keywords - fuzzy controlled battery charger, lithium-ion battery
string, battery equalization
I. INTRODUCTION
Fossil fuel shortages have resulted in ever rising gas prices.
To solve the related economic and pollution problems, electric
cars have emerged as the mode of transportation for the future.
Storage batteries are the principal power source for both
immobile products (UPS continual electric system or automatic
power failure lights) and mobile products (electric powered
cars or electric powered motorcycled). With so many types of
electrical equipment being operated by storage batteries, the
need to more accurately measure the battery charging process
grows every day. Ensure that the user of an electric product can
check the power charging status at any time, and therefore
reduce the time spent charging the battery is becoming a very
important question.
The lithium-Ion battery has adapted to the requirements of
modern products. However, the voltage in a single Lithium-Ion
battery is inherently low. Therefore, a series of cells are usually
employed for many practical applications. With a series
connected battery string, imbalanced cell voltage will cause
over charging or deep-discharging and decrease the total
battery storage capacity and lifecycle. Safe operation during
lithium-ion battery string charging and discharging is more
complex than with other batteries. Therefore, a series
connected battery string module that controls and monitors
usage efficiency and battery lifecycle extension has become a
necessary battery engineering technique.
The battery string charging time can be reduced using a
fast-charging system. There are many ways to charge a battery,
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PEDS2009
Yuang-Shung Lee Sung-Hsin Hsiao
Dept. of Electronic Eng. & Applied Science and Eng.
ASE Inst. Institute
Fu Jen Catholic University Fu Jen Catholic University
Taipei, Taiwan Taipei, Taiwan
497598080@mail.fju.edu.t
w
with the most simple being CC_CV battery charging. If you
want to shorten the time it takes to charge a battery you must
use a stronger current, but the drawback is that this will cause
the battery temperature to increase dramatically and shorten its
life. On the other hand if the current is smaller, it will take
longer to charge the battery. The charging method has a large
effect on battery life. Overcharging causes damage to the
battery and shortens its’ life. An explanation of battery
charging methods is described below [1-4]. Most battery
charging devices use the constant voltage (CV) charging
method because the battery charger circuit is simple and easy
to control. The drawback is that at the beginning stages of
charging the voltage is too low, usually resulting in the current
being too high, causing the battery temperature to dramatically
increase. This in turn causes damage to the battery and shortens
of its life. A battery charging process that transforms constant
current into constant voltage can be divided into two stages.
The first stage uses constant current to charge the battery, thus
shorting the time it takes to charge the battery. After the battery
voltage reaches a set level, the system switches to using
constant voltage to charge the battery. During this stage the
battery charging current will gradually become smaller as time
goes by, shortening the time it takes to charge the battery.
Currently most lithium-ion batteries on the market use this
battery charging method [5].
From the energy conservation and environmental protection
point of view, electric cars are undoubtedly the future trend for
transportation. Therefore, developing corresponding battery
control systems is very important. A DSP based fuzzy
controlled battery charging system is developed for a series
connected lithium-ion battery string with the individual cell
equalization schemes (ICEs) proposed in this paper. We use the
fuzzy control method to adjust the charger output current. The
proposed charging system can shorten the charging time within
a specified charging profile and assure that the each cell in the
battery string will be operated within the safe voltage range.
II. THE CHARACTERISTIC OF SERIES CONNECTED
LITHIUM-ION BATTERY
The strong points of lithium-ion batteries are its no memory
effect, high working voltage, no pollution, low discharge rate,
high volume energy density, and high weight energy density
characteristics, making it a focal point of new power supply

research in recent years. Lithium ion batteries are pollutant-free
green environment friendly secondary batteries that fit the
green energy development needs of the international
community. These batteries can also be applied to the high
energy power environment of hybrid electric cars (HEV) and
electric vehicles (EV). The power batteries used in electric
bicycles, electric cars and other electric tools, require several
batteries working together to achieve a higher capacity and
higher power.
A series battery module, usually a single electric power
source, is used for the battery series charging process.
However, the electrochemical properties and resistance of
individual batteries and non-linear behaviors are not all the
same. Therefore when in operation, differences in
environmental conditions will produce differences in battery
performance. Taking this into account, even if the current that
enters the batteries is all the same, the amount of power
charged by each individual battery will not necessarily be the
same. If the power stored by each batter is different, then there
will be an even bigger difference in the terminal voltage
displayed by each battery. Most charging circuits are only able
to detect the terminal voltage of the entire battery module,
using this to determine when to stop charging the batteries. For
this reason, when the battery stops charging it is possible that
other batteries within the module have already reached an over-
charged state, while other batteries are still not fully charged
[6-8].
Over-charging or deep-discharging a lithium-ion battery
results in undesirable chemical and electrochemical reactions.
A lithium-ion battery protection circuit and the management
system are very important for series connected battery string. It
important to measure the power in a battery judge the operating
standards to prevent battery aging and preserve battery life
span. When the battery management system in electric
powered or hybrid electric cars into consideration, it is
necessary to constantly monitor and balance the voltage in a
series of 100 batteries working together. Fig. 1 shows the
battery charging properties for the Panasonic CGR18650HG
lithium-ion battery [9]. To improve the battery charging
efficiency, we tried to add control methods. Because it was
difficult to establish a mathematical model for the battery
during the control process we used a fuzzy control method to
control the charge in the batteries.
Fig 1. The charged profiles of lithium-ion battery
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III. FUZZY LOGIC CONTROLLED CHARGING SYSTEM
Because the lithium-ion battery is a complex nonlinear
element and the fuzzy logic controller does not need an exact
mathematical model for control, an adaptive way to control the
cells was developed. To enhance the charging efficiency we
added a fuzzy logic controller to change the charge current in
the CC-CV section. Fig. 2 demonstrates the intelligent charging
system configuration for a series connected battery with
individual cell equalizers (I.C.E). The I.C.E scheme modified
from dissipative cell level voltage management for a battery
balancing system. The proposed intelligent charging system
can shorten the charging time based on the fuzzy control law
and assure that the each cell in the battery string will be
operated within the safe voltage range [10].
The fuzzy logic controller can be classified into four parts.
Fuzzifier: The fuzzifier uses the membership function to
convert the system true value into linguistic fuzzy sets. Fuzzy
rule base: According to professional experience and the system
control operating, method a fuzzy rule base is designed. Fuzzy
inference engine: Fuzzy inference engine is an operating
method that transforms the fuzzy rule base into fuzzy linguistic
output, any rules can compound one fuzzy inference engine.
Defuzzifier: The way in which the linguistic fuzzy sets are
converted into true values.
The charging current is controlled by the fuzzy logic
controller output according to the cell voltage (VB) and
differences in voltage (Vd) among individual cells. The
membership function is described using five linguistic
variables, i.e. VL (very large), L (large), M (medium), S
(small), and VS (very small) in triangular form [11]. The rule
base collects the control rules that describe the knowledge and
experience of the battery equalization control in the fuzzy set
[12]. The decision rule Table I for the linguistic variables for
the fuzzy logic controller is two-dimensional (5x5) and
constructed in the rule-based memory system of the control
scheme. The linguistic inference results are converted into
numerical output Io by the defuzzifier. The fuzzy controlled
output current Io is the desired battery charging current of the
proposed cell charge scheme shown in Fig. 3.
Fig 2. Charging system block diagram

TABLE I. FUZZY CONTROL RULL BASE
Fig 3. The 3-D characteristic curve of the fuzzy logic controller output
IV. DISSIPATIVE INDIVIDUAL CELL EQUALIZATION UNIT
Fig. 4 shows the proposed dissipative individual cell
equalization unit (ICE) for the series connected battery strings.
The different equalize circuit structure was used in different
battery capacity, charging method, battery category and
environment. In this strategy of battery equalization, the
voltages of individual cells are monitored and the voltage of
individual cells is managed by passing current around a cell
through a dissipative element (e.g., a resistor) during charge.
This strategy insures that all of the cells remain within the
specified voltage limits and that all cells are charged to the
same voltage level. Of course, the capacity of the battery is still
limited by the first cell of the battery string to reach the
minimum voltage during discharge.
Fig 4. The dissipative individual cell equalization unit
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The dissipative method is the simplest, cheapest, and least
complex cell balancing technique. The circuit is shown in Fig. 4.
It detects the highest voltage and uses the resistor to remove
charge from the highest cell until they match the charge of the
lowest cells. However, large resistors can cause power
dissipation and high energy losses. Thus, the large resistor
could result in design with costly thermal management
requirements. Therefore, if we use small charge currents, the
efficiency can be increased and would be more suited for
operating the system.
V. EXPERIMENTAL PLATFORM
DSPIC30F4011 was used to complete the proposed
charging system structure for the intelligent lithium-ion
battery shown as Fig. 2. It adopts a differential amplifier
constructed using OP amplifiers to read the voltage on each
battery, charging amount of battery-cascade current during the
charging process. The acquired parameters will be provided
for DSP calculation to adjust the charger output current to
determine the voltage and current required for battery charging
and equalization. The current sensor is also used to monitor
whether over-current exists during the battery-cascade
charging process to protect the battery-cascade. The battery
management system could pass the system status information
over to a computer for processing using the UART
communication interface.
Fig. 6 shows the flow chart for the battery charging control
program. First initialize the system variables. Next use the
analog multi-tool to change the reading of the initial voltage
level for each battery in the battery string using the ADC of
the inner MCU from analogue signal to digital signal. After
knowing the battery voltage and comparing and identifying
the single battery with the highest voltage; start the battery
charging control process. Read the current sensor to see if the
battery charging current is correct or not and then pass the cell
voltage information to the computer for processing using the
UART communication interface. Fig. 5 is a flow chart for the
battery equalization control program.
Fig 5. Flow chart for the battery equalizing control program
 PEDS2009
the fuzzy control, when the battery voltage increases and the
difference in voltage becomes small, the battery charging
current will be comparatively higher. The charging time is
around 1 hour and 3 minutes, shorter by 12 minutes using the
unadjusted process. Fig. 9 displays the membership function of
the fuzzy control after adjustment. Fig. 10 is the battery charge
characteristic after membership function adjustment. If we
adjust the battery charging current range to 4 (A), after the
membership function is adjusted, the battery charging current
as a whole will increase and the time needed to charge the
battery will shorten to within 1 hour. Fig. 11 is the resulting
charge characteristic after membership function adjustment and
the changed current range to 4 (A).

Fig 6. Flow chart for the battery charging control program

Fig 8. The charge characteristic of add fuzzy control on lithium-ion battery

Fig 9. The membership function of the fuzzy controller after adjustment

Fig 7. Experimental platform of fuzzy controlled lithium-ion charging system

VI. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTT

The dsPIC30F was adopted as the battery control chip with
charger in this experimental platform shown as Fig. 7. Three
series connected lithium-ion battery strings were used in the
battery charging experiment. The battery type is SANYO
UR18650W, the battery initial voltage is following below:
VB1=2.8(V), VB2=2.8(V), and VB3=2.8(V).
During the battery charging process, we adopted a fuzzy
control device to control the feedback current for the battery
charger and adjust the size of the output current to shorten the
Fig 10. The charge characteristic of the battery after the adjustment of the
time of charging to 1 hour and 15 minutes. Fig. 8 is a voltage membership function
chart for the fuzzy control added to the battery series during the
experiment. If we adjust the membership function of Io with

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Fig 11. The charge characteristic of adjusting the membership functions and the Fig 13. The comparison chart of battery discharging capacity
changing current range to 4A

The proposed battery charger with the fuzzy controlled

charging algorithm for series connected battery as the structure
shows as Fig. 2. The experiment verified that this system can
indeed shorten the charging time. Comparing the battery
charging voltage after adding the fuzzy controller and a normal
1C charge, it can be seen that the battery charging time
decreased after adding the fuzzy control. The battery voltage
was also maintained at a safe level. Fig. 12 shows that a normal
1C battery charge takes about one hour and a half with a charge
capacity of 1446 mAh. After adding the fuzzy control, the time
was shortened by about 15 minutes. After adjusting the
membership function, the charging time was shortened by 25
Fig 14. The experimental result of battery equalization without charging
minutes. If the charging current is adjusted to 4 (A), the
charging time can be shortened again by 35 minutes, greatly
increasing the battery charging efficiency. When comparing the
results from the 3 different kinds of fully charged battery
systems after adding the fuzzy controller and the capacity of a
1C charge, it can be seen that after adding the fuzzy controller
the charging capacity was 2% higher than that for the 1C
charge. After adjusting the membership function, the charging
capacity was 99% of the 1C charge. After adjusting the current
to 4 (A), the charging capacity was higher than 1C about
7mAh, displaying much more efficient battery charging. Fig.
13 is a comparison chart of the discharging capacities.
The battery equalization initial conditions of batteries are
VB1=3.4 (V), VB2=3.6 (V), VB3=3.8 (V), Fig. 14 shows the Fig 15. The experimental result of battery equalization with charging
experimental results of the battery equalization without
charging. The equalization result for the proposed charging VII. CONCLUSION
circuit with ICEs is shown in Fig. 15.
This paper applied fuzzy theory to a DSP fuzzy controlled
lithium-ion charging system. The proposed method reduces the
charging time and circuit space. Cell balancing control was
significant in extending the battery life and charging safety of
the battery stack and improving the battery charging efficiency.
In comparison with the 1C charge, it was possible to shorten
the charging time by 15 minutes. If the membership function
was adjusted and the current range increased, the charging time
was reduced by 35%. The charging capacity was larger than
that in the 1C charge. The proposed charging system can
shorten the charging time and assure that the each cell in the
battery string will be operated within the safe voltage range. In
our future research, the fuzzy control method will be applied to
battery equalization and add functions for estimating the
Fig 12. The comparison chart with battery charging voltage battery residual capacitance, monitoring and controlling the
each single battery status. The proposed method will battery

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operation more safe and develop a set of complete battery
charging-discharging management systems.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research work was supported by Fu Jen Catholic
University and Chung-Shan Institute of Science and
Technology Electronic System Research Division, under 6301-
03 and CSIST 804-V101 (98), respectively.
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