Search Results

In an automotive air-conditioning (AC) system, upfront prediction of the cabin cool down rate in the initial design stage will help in reducing the overall product development (PD) time. Vehicle having higher seating capacity will have higher thermal load and providing thermal comfort to all passengers uniformly is a challenging task for the automotive HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air conditioning) industry. Dual HVAC unit is generally used to provide uniform cooling to a large cabin volume. One dimensional (1D) simulation is being extensively used to predict the HVAC performance during the initial stage of PD. The refrigerant loop with components such as compressor, condenser, TXV and evaporator was modeled. The complicated vehicle cabin including the glazing surfaces and enclosures were modeled as a three row duct system using 1D tool AMESim®. The material type, density, specific heat capacity and thermal conductivity of the material were specified.

Simulation has become an integral part in the design and development of an automotive air-conditioning (AC) system. Simulation is widely used for both system level and component level analyses and are carried out with one-dimensional (1D) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools. This paper describes a 1D approach to model refrigerant loop and vehicle cabin to simulate the soak and cool down analysis. Soak and cool down is one of the important tests that is carried out to test the performance of a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system of a vehicle. Ability to simulate this cool down cycle is thus very useful. 1D modeling is done for the two-phase flow through the refrigerant loop and air flow across the heat exchangers and cabin with the commercial software AMESim. The model is able to predict refrigerant pressure and temperature inside the loop at different points in the cycle.