Interior climate simulation of electric buses

Abstract

Today a large part of the power consumption for public transport vehicles is used by the Heat, Ventilation and Air Conditioning, HVAC, system to ensure climate comfort in the bus. In the transition to electrical vehicles it is of high importance to reduce the HVAC systems power consumption. With electrical vehicles the power consumption for the HVAC system is competing with the driving range for the vehicle since there is a limited battery capacity. By simulating the interior climate in buses investigations on how to reduce the power consumption of the HVAC system can be done. Simulations enable that more parameters can be tested compared with experimental testing. In this master thesis a first draw of a method for simulating interior climate has been developed. The method is based on CFD analyze of flow and temperature in steady state. No passengers are included in the simulation and passengers comfort are not taken into account. Important findings regarding meshing, boundary conditions and physics models for the numerical CFD analyzis are presented. A heat transfer coefficient, HTC, sweep has been performed to calibrate the simulation model to experimental data.