Experimental Temperature Modelization for Solar Racing Vehicle

This paper presents an experimental method to model the temperature response of the inverters of the solar car Emilia 3 which is the vehicle build by the Italian Onda Solare team for the World Solar Challenge 2013. Object of this paper is using the experimental data collected to create a thermal model of the inverters to predict dangerous situations and adding it to the energetic model of the overall vehicle powertrain to better simulate racing conditions and help the race strategy planning. The data is elaborated to identify the experimental transfer function between motor current and inverter temperature. The function is validated with the current measurements and its behavior was found to be consistent with the real temperature data.