Scaled SRM and Drive Unit for HVAC Systems in Electric Vehicles

This paper deals with the design of a real-time simulator of an air conditioning unit (HVAC) for electric vehicles using a scaled compressor motor and a scaled converter (SR-Drive). This is a valuable tool in order to determine the optimum size of the motor and the optimal features of the converter. This flexible scaling method can be used to reduce the cost of performing the test benches where a HVAC system can be simulated with different motors and converters using the same components but using different scaling gains. There are several scaling methods but in the present paper Buckingham Pi method is used. Hysteresis control is used to manage a switched reluctance motor (SRM) and the motor and converter models are built using Matlab / Simulink. Different simulation scenarios are applied using Dspace RTI unit.