Design of Intelligent Cooling System with electrical Thermostat and Implementation of Strategy in Engine Control Unit

In this paper, a control oriented strategy has been used to manage thermal behaviors in an IC engine. For this purpose, an electrical thermostat along with a special strategy in engine control unit (ECU) is utilized to achieve better engine outputs including torque, emission, fuel consumption and knock targets in different engine thermal fields. Our activities are divided into three main categories: software development, hardware development and analyzing results on NEDC test on vehicle. In the software phase, a model was designed to control the electric thermostat through various working conditions. This model presents proper PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) to electric thermostat to control engine thermal management considering other effective inputs like intake air temperature and cooling fans responses. Hardware development includes installation of single-act and double-act electric thermostat on vehicle cooling system. Furthermore, the control software applies on GCU (Global Control Unit) to connect software to hardware on vehicle. Finally, all important parameters are recorded through NEDC test on vehicle with Single-act, Double-act electrical thermostat and compared with results of standard mechanical thermostat. Results show better achievement in torque, emission, fuel consumption and knock outputs.