BEV THERMAL MANAGEMENT 1D MODELING FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE SYSTEM DESIGN

The growth of market share of battery electric vehicles, as possible solution to the GHG environmental issues, has led to an increase in technological development in this technical area, that has to face powertrain thermal management as one of the biggest challenges to handle. To maintain in a narrow range of temperature the powertrain components, an efficient thermal management system is necessary. This is even more true for high performance applications. In this scenario, this thesis aims to develop a parametrized model of a high??performance BEV cooling system, by means of 1D modelling approach by Gamma Technologies software (GT-Suite), aiming to reach a good trade-off between a computationally fast and detailed model at the same time. This work was carried out with Powertech Engineering in collaboration with Maserati. The main modelled components are the under-hood module, coolant circuits and thermal characteristics of e-motors and battery pack that have been realized in GT??Suite, made on the basis of datasheets and reference models provided by Maserati. The extensive parametrization allows to change almost every property of the system and its components, such as the number of e-motors and the capacity of the battery, thus making it suitable for a wide range of battery electric vehicles. The idea is to obtain a high modularity of the model that can be used to guide design choices. The final goal is to couple this model with another one regarding the kinematic and dynamic aspects of the vehicle under study, made in Simulink, in order to simulate the run of many laps of a given track. As a result, the thermal behavior of the entire system will be simulated during the track run time, so as to understand in a predictive way when the vehicle encounters the first thermal bottleneck and which it is. This strategy will allow to speed up the validation process of a high-performance BEV, by giving in a short time a first overall thermal analysis of it. The main knowledge and support about simulation in GT-Suite have been offered by Powertech Engineering, an independent consulting firm providing CAE simulation services to the automotive and transportation industry.