Development of a Framework for Battery Pack Optimization in Electrified Construction Equipment

Sammanfattning

This thesis focuses on the development of a computational tool that can guide decisions regarding the modularity and standardization of battery pack configurations for heavy electrical construction machines, helping companies transition towards electrification and reduce emissions. As a foundation for the development and testing of the tool, existing electrical machines from Volvo Construction Equipment (VCE) and battery modules from Micropower have been utilized. This delimited the scope and allowed the thesis to present recommendations for a fictional case with high realism. Through iterative development, what began as a simple concept evolved into a robust tool capable of performing optimizations to find solutions for different categories of machines. The optimization framework within modeFRONTIER 2025 manages the input and output data for a Python script that performs the necessary calculations to evaluate the feasibility of each design. By automating the generation of a battery pack portfolio with different structures of serial and parallel connections, the tool makes it possible to find a suitable solution for a specified group of machines, supported by an effective placement method. Within this thesis, two different placement methods, First-Fit and Best-Fit, have been tested and evaluated. The gathered data from this comparison resulted in a recommendation of the Best-Fit method, primarily because it performed significantly faster evaluations with in most cases identical outcomes as the First-Fit method.