Real-time Drive Cycle Simulation of Automotive Climate Control System

Abstract

Technologies like hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS) can play a significant role in reducing the product development life cycle. An essential requirement for HILS is the availability of system models that are capable of running in real-time. This paper demonstrates a closed loop real-time simulation of a vehicle with a climate control system model developed in Modelica. This paper details the modeling aspects of the vehicle system and climate control system using the object-oriented, acausal modeling language Modelica. To demonstrate the real-time simulation capabilities of the developed models, they were integrated with a controller model developed in the Simulink environment and the integrated model was then simulated in an Opal-RT real-time environment. This paper describes the models developed and the tool-chain used to achieve real-time simulation. The real-time simulation results as well as the performance results are also presented. This paper demonstrates Modelica's capabilities in creating models for real-time vehicle climate control system simulations.

Productivity improvement tool for configuration of Modelica plant models and integration with Simulink controller models

“…The Modelica plant models developed for usage with the MATLAB GUI Tool explained in this paper was related to Climate Controller testing using Modelica plant models [1]. Best practices explained previously were taken care while modeling the plant (vehicle with HVAC system).…”

“…The tool discussed in this paper is used with a vehicle air-conditioning system model and its controller. The development of the plant models for both vehicle and air-conditioning system is extensively described in the previous work [1]. The way in which the plant model is packaged in Modelica helps the tool in configuring the models easily and automatically.…”

Real-Time Simulation of Vapour Compression Cycles

“…Although finite volumes cause a high CPU work load we decided to use heat exchangers based of 7 finite volumes each, in contrast to Pitchaikani et al [18] using just one cell. The pressure drop in the heat exchangers is assumed to be negligible.…”