The battery management system (BMS) is of great significance to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) because of the fragility of lithium-ion batteries. The BMS is designed to monitor and protect the battery to enhance its performance and extend its cycle life. The development of the BMS platform is a key component of the BMS because it determines the functionality and efficiency of the BMS.

This thesis discusses the development of a novel battery management system platform. The hardware structure consists of multiple local management units and one central management unit. The local management unit was developed as an individual battery management system to provide comprehensive management to the battery pack to which it was attached with up to 16 battery cells. Direct power supply, serial...[ Read more ]

The battery management system (BMS) is of great significance to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) because of the fragility of lithium-ion batteries. The BMS is designed to monitor and protect the battery to enhance its performance and extend its cycle life. The development of the BMS platform is a key component of the BMS because it determines the functionality and efficiency of the BMS.

This thesis discusses the development of a novel battery management system platform. The hardware structure consists of multiple local management units and one central management unit. The local management unit was developed as an individual battery management system to provide comprehensive management to the battery pack to which it was attached with up to 16 battery cells. Direct power supply, serial differential mode voltage detection, NTC array temperature detection, dual mode current detection, isolated charge and discharge control and accurate timing were developed. The central management unit was developed as a coordinator inside the BMS network and as an interface to outside BMS components. A graphic user interface was also developed to provide intuitive interactions to the user.

A BMS communication protocol based on the CAN communication was further developed to provide comprehensive software management to the whole BMS. The BMS communication protocol provided three layers of management to the BMS: data management layer, network management layer and application management layer, offering ordered meaningful and reliable data transmission, identification and monitoring over each CAN node and specific working process management to the whole BMS, respectively.

The experiments show that the developed BMS platform is able to provide accurate data collection and real-time protection to the batteries. System capacity was also calculated in this thesis to indicate its applicability to other large battery electric vehicles.