Dr Thomas Steffen

Background

Thomas Steffen studied Electrical Engineering and Automation and Control at the Technical University of Ilmenau, and he continued with a PhD in Fault Control at the Technical University of Hamburg and Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He worked for three years at mBalance in Amsterdam on message-routing solutions for mobile phone networks. Thomas Steffen joined Loughborough University as a postdoc Research Associate in 2007, and the Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering as a Lecturer in 2010. He is now Reader for Control Engineering and Open Research Champion for the School.

Outline of main research interests: 

Thomas Steffen has decades of experience in the control of power systems and using statistics for analysing engineering systems. His main technology focus is the electrification of vehicle powertrains and the smart charging of electric vehicles. He is the inventor of the “moments of power” approach to analysing energy systems under stochastic boundary conditions.

Key research areas include:

• MCMC analysis of technical systems
• control of electric machines, engine, powertrain and after-treatment control
• optimisation of energy systems for high efficiency
• analysis, simulation, and control of hybrid powertrains
• first-principle modelling (white box and grey box)
• digital engineering and digital twin
• The component in the Loop and X-in-the-Loop
• geometric approach to the control of linear and non-linear systems
• (a variation of the Non-linear Direct Inverse method NDI)
• virtual sensors
• fault tolerant control and reconfiguration

Grants and contracts:

• Innovate UK: TC48 – Town & Country Hybrid 48V, a collaborative research project to demonstrate a hybrid 48V powertrain
• APC6: Accelerating the Drive to Low Carbon Propulsion
• ViVID: Virtual Vehicle Integration and Development

Current teaching responsibilities:

• TTB211 Electrotechnology
• TTC012 Spacecraft Engineering
• TTD108 Power Electronics, Machines, and Drives (PEMD)
• TTP401 Hybrid and Electric Vehicles

Current administrative responsibilities:

• Deputy Head of Department for Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering
• Thomas is ready to provide industrial training on electric machines, hybrid and electric powertrains, and embedded software engineering.

Recent publications:

• Moments of power: Statistical analysis of the primary energy consumption of a vehicle
• Comparing different resonant control approaches for torque ripple minimisation in electric machines
• A review of component-in-the-loop: Cyber-physical experiments for rapid system development and integration
• Evaluation of optimal state of charge planning using MPC
• An offline closed-form optimal predictive power management strategy for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles

Selected publications:

• A machine learning approach to traffic flow prediction using CP tensor decomposition
• Optimal electric vehicle charging considering the effects of a financial incentive on battery ageing
• Optimal charging of electric vehicles using a stochastic dynamic programming model and price prediction
• Optimal charging of EVs in a real time pricing electricity market
• Analysing the reliability of actuation elements in series and parallel configurations for high-redundancy actuation
• Control Reconfiguration After Actuator Failures Using Disturbance Decoupling Methods | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore
• Control Reconfiguration of Dynamical Systems: Linear Approaches and Structural Tests | SpringerLink

 View central admin publications database

External collaborators:

• Caterpillar
• Ford
• Jaguar LandRover (JLR)
• Electric Miles
• Des19ncor
• HAW, Hamburg
• TH Cologne

External roles and appointments:

• External examiner at Cranfield University and University of Bristol
• Co-organiser of the Advanced Engine Control Symposium in Tianjin
• Member of the SAE WPT Taskforce for J2954

Open Source

Thomas published several open-source libraries for MATLAB and Simulink. The most relevant ones are:

• ELVIO: ELectrified Vehicle modelling for sImulation and Optimisation
• Moments of Power: a simple but growing library to study energy systems under stochastic boundary conditions