Current-Stress-Aware Fuzzy Logic Control for Safe Fast Charging of Lithium-Ion Battery Packs

Abstract

Fast charging of lithium-ion battery packs involves a compromise between charging speed, temperature rise, and aggressive current profiles that may accelerate battery degradation. This paper presents a current-stress-aware fuzzy logic control framework for safe fast charging of series-connected lithium-ion battery cells. The proposed controller uses a physically interpretable two-input, one-output fuzzy structure in which the highest cell-voltage difference, Vd, and the lowest single-cell voltage, VB, are used to determine the charging-current command, Icharge. Unlike conventional fuzzy charging approaches that rely on manually selected membership functions or weighted single-objective tuning, the proposed method simultaneously optimizes the Gaussian membership-function parameters and the input/output scaling gains using a Pareto-based multi-objective optimization framework. The resulting design vector contains 21 decision variables, including 18 membership-function parameters and three scaling gains. Three conflicting objectives are minimized: the time required to reach 95% state of charge, the maximum temperature rise above the reference temperature, and a normalized current-stress index based on the integral of the squared charging current. The framework is implemented in MATLAB/Simulink using a three-cell Panasonic NCR18650PF lithium-ion battery pack model. The obtained Pareto front reveals the expected trade-off between fast charging and battery protection. The fastest solution reaches 95% SOC in 5440 s but produces the highest temperature rise and current-stress index, whereas the selected knee-point controller reaches the target in 6880 s while reducing the maximum temperature rise and current-stress index compared with the fastest solution. Robustness tests under variations in initial SOC, cell imbalance, initial temperature, capacity scaling, and internal-resistance scaling show that the knee-point controller maintains stable charging behavior and satisfies the imposed thermal safety constraint. The results demonstrate that the proposed current-stress-aware Pareto-optimized fuzzy controller provides a systematic and interpretable approach for balancing charging speed, thermal safety, and battery stress in lithium-ion battery fast charging.