Numerical and experimental studies to increase the HVAC fan performance for electrical vehicles – Part 2

Abstract

A more efficient impeller was developed to replace the HVAC fan from an electrified vehicle in order to lower his energy consumption. This will lead ultimately to an increase of the electrified vehicle range. Three different impellers were designed having the following modifications than the original HVAC fan: a different angle of attack for the blades, changed blade radius, modified blade length, different positioning of the blades, different number of blades. First study consisted in the testing of all three HVAC impellers using the numerical simulation method. In the second part of this study, the most promising new impeller, given the numerical results, was 3D printed and installed in a new casing, specially built for this study. Then the performance of the impeller it was experimentally tested, and the results were compared with the original fan experimental result from a previous study. The main conclusion is that the old impeller is around 240% less efficient than the new impeller and only by changing one simple component in the electrified vehicle design (HVAC fan in this case), the range of the car can grow with approximately 3.84km for each fully charged battery.