Descripció del projecte
Thermal Management in an electric car is the system responsible for the cooling & heating of the e-components in the cooling circuit (e.g., battery, e-machine…) as well as the climatization of the cabin through the A/C system.
For a given cooling circuit architecture/configuration, the control strategy of its actuators (such as valves, pumps, or fan) is crucial for the vehicle operation since it directly impacts key specifications such as electric range, charging time or dynamic performance (e.g., 0-100 km/h acceleration or lap times in racing tracks). It is a complex system with multiple signals (control inputs) and with multiple and usually confronted goals (e.g., maximize components life cycle while reducing electric consumption / maximizing electric range).
The PhD project called “Optimization of Thermal Management in Electric cars” aims to contribute to the thermal management improvement through research on real-time constrained optimization-based control strategies. The project covers several stages in the process of a complete control strategy design for dynamical complex systems. Besides, key aspects such as the consideration of uncertainties in the system model and/or rejection of exogenous disturbances will also be taken into account within the research to be developed. It is a joint project between the “Departament d’Enginyeria de Sistemes, Automàtica i Informàtica Industrial” from UPC-BarcelonaTECH and the Technical Center of Seat/Cupra.
Base for this dissertation is a previous “Doctorat Industrial” conducted by the same parties resulting in publications [1] and [2]. However, numerical methods have evolved in the last years and new theoretical strategies have been proposed, so there is room for improvement in the real-time optimization of the thermal management system, besides considering new aspects and alternatives with respect to the aforementioned references.
Key milestones for the proposed project are:
• a focused data acquisition in a real vehicle
• the design of the dynamical model involving the cooling circuit & related vehicle systems
• the design of the most suitable control strategy
• the validation of the proposed system dynamical model and the control strategy in simulation environment
• implementation and validation of the control strategy in a real vehicle
[1] J. Lopez-Sanz, C. Ocampo-Martinez, J. Alvarez-Florez, M. Moreno, R. Ruiz-Mansilla, J. Kalmus, M. Graeber, and G. Lux. Thermal management in plug-in hybrid electric vehicles: a real-time nonlinear model predictive control implementation. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 66(9):7751-7760, 2017. www.doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2017.2678921
[2] J. Lopez-Sanz, C. Ocampo-Martinez, J. Alvarez-Florez, M. Moreno Eguilaz, R. Ruiz-Mansilla, J. Kalmus, M. Graeber, and G. Lux. Nonlinear model predictive control for thermal management in plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 66(5):3632-3644, 2017. www.doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2016.2597242
