Abstract
Keywords Comfort, HVAC, Strategy, Climate, Control
Abstract - As the market penetration of automotive air conditioning systems in Europe approaches 80%, the demand for automatic climate control systems is set to increase dramatically. These climate control systems must quickly achieve and then efficiently maintain the thermal comfort of the occupants under a wide range of external ambient conditions. For many vehicles, this performance must be achieved through optimising the intelligent control system strategy, without significantly altering hardware. This paper describes an alternative approach developed by Ricardo for achieving optimum comfort through climate control strategy definition. Correlation of measurements from vehicle testing with subjective appraisal ratings are presented, and comfort zones are defined to which the system should control. It will be shown that control of the temperature, humidity, direction and velocity of the air is required for achieving thermal comfort, and a new methodology for the prediction of occupant comfort is presented.