Control Design for a Thermal Hardware-in-the-Loop Test Bench for Automobile Thermal Management Systems

Abstract In this contribution the control design for a thermal hardware-in-the-loop test bench is described. The test bench was designed and constructed at the RWTH Aachen University as a means of real time testing of new hardware components for the thermal management of electrified vehicles in a realistic environment. The task of the test bench is to simulate the thermal load of the tested device which is defined by the volume flow rate and the temperature of the fluid at its inlet. For this purpose, the test bench features a flow heater, fluid pump and process cooling that are to be actuated by an appropriate control algorithm to regulate the desired thermal load. The presented control structure consists of a cascaded model-based predictive controller with underlying conventional PID-control. The controller is applied to the test bench and approved during operation. Experimental control results are presented and discussed.