Off-board fast-charging systems for electric vehicles require high-power DC-DC converters capable of maintaining rapid transient regulation without overshooting current boundaries. Dual Active Bridge converters satisfy these topology requirements, but conventional Proportional-Integral controllers tuned via static methods struggle under severe load steps and non-linear battery dynamics. In this study, we present a Dynamic Barnacles Mating Optimization framework engineered to automate controller gain synthesis. By introducing a time-varying linear decay mechanism to regulate the mating search radius, the proposed algorithm resolves the exploration-exploitation imbalance inherent in standard metaheuristic search strategies. Algorithm performance was benchmarked across 23 classical test functions, followed by offline converter simulation models and real-time validation on a hardware emulator. Statistical analysis under a Holm-Bonferroni corrected test confirmed that the dynamic search mechanism significantly improves solution accuracy and stability over standard barnacles optimization without incurring statistical losses. When applied to controller tuning, the proposed optimizer effectively suppressed transient current overshoot during severe load steps in offline simulation models. In real-time hardware emulation, the controller suppressed supply voltage disturbances within 7.2 milliseconds and restricted startup current overshoot below 3.5%. These results verify that dynamic search radius decay synthesizes well-damped control parameters, preventing overcurrent protection tripping and ensuring safe, stable electric vehicle fast-charging.
Citation: Ying Foo Leong, Nur Huda Ramlan, Suliana Ab-Ghani, Hamdan Daniyal, Mohd Herwan Sulaiman. A novel dynamic barnacles mating optimizer with linear decay mechanism for dual active bridge control: hardware-in-the-loop validation[J]. AIMS Electronics and Electrical Engineering, 2026, 10(4): 677-705. doi: 10.3934/electreng.2026028
Off-board fast-charging systems for electric vehicles require high-power DC-DC converters capable of maintaining rapid transient regulation without overshooting current boundaries. Dual Active Bridge converters satisfy these topology requirements, but conventional Proportional-Integral controllers tuned via static methods struggle under severe load steps and non-linear battery dynamics. In this study, we present a Dynamic Barnacles Mating Optimization framework engineered to automate controller gain synthesis. By introducing a time-varying linear decay mechanism to regulate the mating search radius, the proposed algorithm resolves the exploration-exploitation imbalance inherent in standard metaheuristic search strategies. Algorithm performance was benchmarked across 23 classical test functions, followed by offline converter simulation models and real-time validation on a hardware emulator. Statistical analysis under a Holm-Bonferroni corrected test confirmed that the dynamic search mechanism significantly improves solution accuracy and stability over standard barnacles optimization without incurring statistical losses. When applied to controller tuning, the proposed optimizer effectively suppressed transient current overshoot during severe load steps in offline simulation models. In real-time hardware emulation, the controller suppressed supply voltage disturbances within 7.2 milliseconds and restricted startup current overshoot below 3.5%. These results verify that dynamic search radius decay synthesizes well-damped control parameters, preventing overcurrent protection tripping and ensuring safe, stable electric vehicle fast-charging.
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Ying Foo Leong, Nur Huda Ramlan, Suliana Ab-Ghani, Hamdan Daniyal, Mohd Herwan Sulaiman. A novel dynamic barnacles mating optimizer with linear decay mechanism for dual active bridge control: hardware-in-the-loop validation[J]. AIMS Electronics and Electrical Engineering, 2026, 10(4): 677-705. doi: 10.3934/electreng.2026028
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