Design of components libraries for the transient simulation of an automotive refrigerant loop

Amin El Bakkali, Gérard Olivier

Renault – Research Dept

Rapha?lRHOTE-VANEY, Renaud MEILLIER, Cédric ROMAN

IMAGINE SA

ABSTRACT

The automotive A/C system is the key feature in passengers’ comfort. It has an influence on the vehicle consumption and emissions, and hence it is to be taken into account in the Vehicle Thermal Management.

Car manufacturers spend a lot of energy to analyse and control the operating of such systems and are looking for predictive numerical models that would help them design and size the AC system, study its dynamic and static features (internal control loops stability, the time response of the cabin temperature regulation, static error) and quantify accurately its influence on the whole thermal management.

A dedicated tool has been developed by RENAULT and IMAGINE and is presented in this paper.

This tool is composed of a Two-Phase Flow (TPF) library and a specific Air- Conditioning (AC) library: they contain a set of modular components based on a transient thermal-fluid approach. These components allow to model, test and study

different refrigerant loop configurations.