DOMUS – Thermal Cabin Simulation for User-Centered Design

Authors

Niklas Drope, M.Sc., Thomas Hirn, M.Sc., Alexander Kirmas, M.Sc., Institute for Automotive Engineering (ika), RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

Summary

Increasing the range of electric vehicles is of particular importance to achieve high customer acceptance and is therefore the content of many current research projects. The majority of these projects focus on an investigation of the drive train (battery and electric motor). However, the passenger car cabin air conditioning, as the largest auxiliary consumer, also needs to be examined more closely. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation models can be used to perform a cost-effective and fast investigation of new concepts. Within this publication, the focus lies on the construction and validation of such a CFD model of a vehicle cabin. The results of this validation show a high agreement between measurements and simulation. Furthermore, an outlook on future activities is given.

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