Robert Bosch LLC
Thermal Management for Electric Vehicles Engineering
Spring 2016 Co-op
Waltham, MA
Spring 2016 Co-op
Waltham, MA
(1) Literature review of EV thermal technology and global market needs
Many electric vehicle companies have already developed and implemented their own thermal technologies to meet the needs of the drivers in their target market. A literature and market review was conducted to attempt to find answers to the following questions:
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(2) Mechanical and thermal system computational simulation modeling
System level mechanical and thermal interactions have very complex effects on the overall system performance. These components and systems are too complex to model analytically, so a computational simulation was made to try to answer the following questions:
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(3) Climate chamber and hardware thermal system simulation modeling
While simulation software can answer a lot of questions where analytical methods struggle, there are still a large set of assumptions made during computational modeling. To validate the solutions of the computational simulation and confirm that its results are valid in the real world, a physical lab made out of thermal management hardware was constructed to run physical simulations. Designing, fabrication and managing of the climate chamber and thermal modeling hardware was the primary responsibility of my co-op. The TM4EV lab hardware simulation was designed to try to answer the following questions:
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Battery and Powertrain Simulator
The first cart simulates the transfer of energy to and from the system from the vehicle's battery and powertrain.
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Air Loop Simulator
The second cart simulates the energy transfer to and from the air in and around the car
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Systems Test Cart
This cart was designed to be used as a flexible design space for varying the connections between thermal systems
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AftermathI was able to revisit Bosch in December of 2017 to see the progress made a year after I left. I was excited to see that thermal chamber and hardware were still in place as we had left them and that the new co-ops had finished the control and sensor implementation. The fully functional chamber is now being used as it was originally intended to run validation drive cycle cases to further the important research of thermal management in electric vehicles.
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