Design of battery pack and internal combustion engine thermal models for hybrid electric vehicles

This thesis focuses on the design of computational models, capable of simulating the thermal behaviour of a battery pack and internal combustion engine equipping a hybrid electric vehicle tested over a given driving cycle. Both the models manage a lot of input variables and take into account all the thermophysical aspects regulating the heat exchange phenomena between the battery and engine devices and the cooling medium used to maintain their thermal control. The main objective of the research is to design the two models and integrate them in the simulation tool used by Chrysler to predict the performance of hybrid vehicles in the early design stages. After that, using the battery cooling system model, a sensitivity study is performed to understand which are the most important factor affecting the thermal behaviour of the battery cells. Finally, a validation phase is conducted for both the software to guarantee the validity of their results.