Design and control of intelligent cooling system for IC engine

The engine cooling systems in the commercial vehicles have not developed as the other control systems despite the technological improvements. Additionally, researchers in the automotive industry and the universities have focused on the power production and the combustion. Therefore, the thermal management of internal combustion engines, which has the same importance, does not taken into consideration sufficiently. However, optimum management of heat transfer system in the engines has an important effect on many parameters such as the engine performance, lubrication quality, exhaust emissions and fuel efficiency. It is necessary to define the engine cooling fluid temperature and flow rate profiles, and to follow them sensitively by a controller system to be designed. In this paper, it is aimed to design and to produce a thermal management system for internal combustion engines in order to ensure optimal distribution of the heat transfer. The electrically driven coolant pump and DC motor controlled valve is considered as control inputs. Additionally, robust control approach based on lumped parameter control - oriented model of engine cooling system is presented. Finally, the proposed and traditional engine cooling systems are compared by means of exhaust emission values.

I. Introduction

Today, internal combustion (IC) engines have gained lot of importance in the academic and industrial field. When studies on engines, published articles and books are examined, it is seen that researchers focused on power generation and combustion in engines. However, heat transfer in internal combustion engines is not considered as well as power generation. The following advantages are achieved with an optimum heat transfer in internal combustion engines. •

The materials used in the motors are protected against overheating,

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Engine performance improves and thus fuel consumption is reduced,

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Engine lubrication quality increases,

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Harmful exhaust emissions are reduced.