PATAC Builds Thermal Management Model to Optimize Low-Temperature EV Driving Range
Model Saves Thousands of Hours of Costly Physical Testing
“Using Simscape, we created a workflow in which a completely new vehicle-level thermal management model can be developed within 3–4 months.”
Key Outcomes
- Simulink enabled 60,000 km of high-accuracy driving range simulations, saving 2,000 hours of physical test time.
- Simulations achieved a high range accuracy within ±2%.
- Simulink Design Optimization™ reduced low-temperature driving range degradation by 5 to 7% across multiple vehicle models.
Electric vehicles (EVs) experience a significant reduction in driving range in freezing temperatures due to the inefficiency of their thermal management systems. Enhancing the low-temperature performance of EVs requires testing, but testing on physical vehicles is not compatible with rapid and iterative vehicle development cycles. To address this gap, Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center (PATAC), a Shanghai-based joint venture between General Motors and SAIC Motor, used Simscape™ and mathematical calibration to build a vehicle-level thermal management model to enhance the low-temperature performance of EVs.
The team utilized Simscape Fluids™ to design a thermal management system comprising a refrigerant loop, a coolant loop, and various thermal models. To balance accuracy and speed, they simplified and calibrated the tightly coupled subsystems of the EV thermal management system. They also simplified the electric drive and battery into lumped mass blocks and modeled the passenger cabin as a 1D heat exchange system. The team validated the model data against test data.
A prebuilt, toolbox-based heat exchanger model in Simscape Fluids resulted in high fidelity to the test data. The calibrated subsystems with controllers were integrated into the newly built thermal management model to form a closed-loop simulation with the vehicle model. The team is now planning to train a neural network on existing data to forecast usable battery energy under a wide range of low temperatures.
