Estimation of thermal loads in a climatic chamber for vehicle testing

Abstract

From the point of view of energy efficiency of the test bench, a proper design of cooling systems of climatic chambers is also becoming increasingly important for reducing both the investments on the installation and the test costs. This work focuses on the proposal and application of a simple but robust methodology for calculating the thermal loads of the different parts of a light duty vehicle under two driving modes of the New European Driving Cycle. Tests were carried out at three different chamber temperatures: −7 °C, 20 °C and 35 °C. Most important results identified are: (a) thermal loads from the vehicle radiator can be neglected along the cycle when vehicle is tested at −7 °C of ambient temperature, (b) fan of the evaporator of the climatic chamber cooling system and fan of the relative wind are the most important thermal loads from test bench and (c) thermal loads associated to the exhaust gases and engine coolant represent more than half of total thermal loads from the vehicle.