A Novel Methodology for Evaluating the Impact of Energy Efficiency Measures on the Cabin Thermal Comfort of Electric Vehicles

Daniele Basciotti, Dominik Dvorak and Imre Gellai
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Daniele Basciotti: AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Giefinggasse 4, 1210 Vienna, Austria
Dominik Dvorak: AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Giefinggasse 4, 1210 Vienna, Austria
Imre Gellai: AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Giefinggasse 4, 1210 Vienna, Austria

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 15, 1-16

Abstract: Climate control systems have a largely negative effect on the energy consumption of electric vehicles and consequently on their real driving range. Improving the efficiency of climate control systems requires advanced simulation tools for an accurate evaluation of both the energy savings and thermal comfort of innovative heating and cooling solutions. In this study, the advancements beyond the state of the art consists primarily of the methodology tackling the reduction of computational costs of intensive computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and/or time-consuming experimental investigations and the simultaneous assessment of vehicle cabin thermal comfort and energy flows. The approach was validated against climatized chassis dyno measurements from the EU Horizon 2020 research project QUIET. Indeed, all the considered locations within the cabin were properly validated, both in steady state and transient conditions with the largest deviations at steady state below 3 °C. Additionally, the validation results show a perfect agreement for the average cabin predicted mean vote (PMV) value and a largest deviation in terms of the PMV for the other locations below 0.3. Furthermore, the applicability of the methodology is proved with the help of its application on a parametric study for which various cabin temperature setpoints and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) modes were simulated in winter operation.

Keywords: thermal comfort modelling; HVAC system modelling; vehicle climate control; increased driving range (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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