A Study on Modeling and Control of Thermal Management Systems for Pure Electric Vehicles with Battery Temperature Control
Abstract
: To address the cooling and preheating requirements of traction batteries in pure electric vehicles, this study proposes an integrated thermal management system coupling the refrigerant, battery, cabin heating, and motor/power-electronics cooling circuits. The system enables indirect natural cooling, chiller-assisted active cooling, and PTC-based low-temperature preheating of the battery. An AMESim/Simulink co-simulation model was developed, and a finite-state machine was used for operating-mode switching. A cooling-demand-based fuzzy controller was further designed, using cabin and battery cooling demands as inputs and a normalized compressor command as the output. By doing simulations with the WLTC (Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Cycle), it was shown that under hot conditions the cabin temperature stayed around 22 °C and the battery temperature stayed near 32 °C; under cold conditions, the cabin hit the target temperature within 500–600 seconds, while the battery temperature kept rising; compared with a common PID controller, the fuzzy control strategy made the start of cooling better and reduced the changes in cabin temperature and compressor speed, and these results suggest that the proposed system and strategy can help with battery temperature control and thermal management in pure electric cars.