92 Engineering Partner Thermal management in the vehicle Human sensitivity for the computer: The future of climate comfort optimization lies in virtual application By Annika Mahl, Referentin Marketing & PR Officer at ARRK Engineering and Ruxandra Receanu, Technical Editor at ABOPR Press Service in Munich With the introduction of electromobility, the issues of air conditioning and climate comfort are becoming massively more important. This is because unlike the combustion engine, which can always provide sufficient waste heat for heating and operates all electrical consumers in the interior via the generator, the driver of an e-car pays dearly for any heating or cooling power required with potential range. In addition, due to increasing competition in the industry, thermal comfort in the vehicle cabin is increasingly coming into focus as a differentiating feature. This makes it all the more important to optimize thermal management in terms of its quality and efficiency. To date, this has required lengthy development processes, the results of which are strongly influenced by the subjective perception of the application engineers involved. These ultimately evaluate the thermal comfort in the vehicle. Consequently, a way must be found to objectify the development of air conditioning and climate comfort. ARRK Engineering is therefore working to simulate the complex thermal processes using hardware and software dummies, as well as to create a comfort specification. Based on these results, the application work is to be virtualized to a large extent in the future, thus not only achieving a more objective result, but also saving development time and costs. According to the LeasePlan Mobility Insights Report of February 2021, in which a total of around 5,400 people from 21 European countries and the USA were interviewed, 34 percent of participants said that the limited range reduced their interest in an e-car. In Portugal and Germany, even more than six out of ten respondents suffer from what is known as “range anxiety” with regard to electromobility. Whereas in conventionally powered vehicles, all electrical consumers are generally operated via the alternator or, like the air conditioning system, directly by the combustion engine and thus do not usually noticeably reduce the range of a tank of fuel, the e-car supplies With the increasing spread of electromobility, the topics of air conditioning and climate comfort are becoming massively more important. Image: © humonia/iStock
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