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Reduction of internal combustion engines fuel consumption is permanently researched. It leads automotive companies towards global energetic simulation tools to describe the interactions between the engine and the energy consumer systems. Valeo with the EMN Department of Energetic, develop a vehicle energy management tool. It will be able to describe the interactions between: engine, the car cabin heating system, electrical systems and other energy consumers (additional heating system, air conditioning system) implied in the vehicle operation. The first results given by the simulation model have approached quite accurately, the coolant loop warm-up curve, measured during a vehicle test in wind tunnel. The model solves the energy balance on the oil and coolant loops and computes: the heat flux from engine to coolant, the distribution of coolant flows in branches, the thermal exchanges involved in the heater core, the cooling radiator and the oil cooler.

A realistic simulation of engine thermal transient behavior requires a coupling between a combustion model and a thermal model of the engine cooling system. This paper describes a procedure used to realize such a simulation. We will develop reasons that lead us towards the choice of Hohenberg's correlation as an engine heat transfer model. A thermal transient simulation of air blown into the car cabin has been computed on a NEDC driving cycle. An experimental study in a wind tunnel has been carried out to validate the heater core heating power and air temperature simulations.