Sean Michael Kelly

Virtual Thermal Comfort Engineering

Simulation of passenger compartment climatic conditions is becoming increasingly important as a complement to wind tunnel and field testing to help achieve improved thermal comfort while reducing vehicle development time and cost. Delphi Harrison Thermal Systems has collaborated with the University of California, Berkeley to develop the capability of predicting occupant thermal comfort to support automotive climate control systems. At the core of this Virtual Thermal Comfort Engineering (VTCE) technique is a model of the human thermal regulatory system based on Stolwijk’s model but with several enhancements. Our model uses 16 body segments and each segment is modeled as four body layers (core, muscle, fat, and skin tissues) and a clothing layer. The comfort model has the ability to predict local thermal comfort level of an occupant in a highly non-uniform thermal environment as a function of air temperature, surrounding surface temperatures, air velocity, humidity, direct solar flux, as well as the level of activity and clothing type of each individual. VTCE takes into account the geometrical configuration of the passenger compartment including glazing surfaces, pertinent physical and thermal properties of the enclosure with particular emphasis on glass properties. Use of Virtual Thermal Comfort Engineering (VTCE) will allow for exploration of different climate control strategies as they relate to human thermal comfort in a quick and inexpensive manner.

Development and Application of an Integrated Dew Point and Glass Temperature Sensor

Development and Application of an Integrated and cost effectively, the cabin dew point can be calculated and compared to the glass surface temperature to ascertain the likelihood of fog forming on the glass. Thus, by using these sensor inputs, countermeasures in the Automatic Climate Control (ACC) can be made. Today’s ACC systems require driver interaction to initiate windshield glass clearing activities. With the addition of an IDGT sensor and control algorithm, the ACC system can minimize driver distractions by setting the system controls to prevent the onset of windshield fogging. This paper details the development and verification of the sensor, a comparison of sensing technologies/ techniques and a high level overview of the vehicle integration.

Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance Delphi SOFC

The objective of Phase I under this project is to develop a 5 kW Solid Oxide Fuel Cell power system for a range of fuels and applications. During Phase I, the following will be accomplished: Develop and demonstrate technology transfer efforts on a 5 kW stationary distributed power generation system that incorporates steam reforming of natural gas with piped-in water (Demonstration System A); and Initiate development of a 5 kW system for later mass-market automotive auxiliary power unit application, which will incorporate Catalytic Partial Oxidation (CPO) reforming of gasoline, with anode exhaust gas injected into an ultra-lean burn internal combustion engine. This technical progress report covers work performed by Delphi from July through December 2002 under Department of Energy Cooperative Agreement DE-FC-02NT41246 for the 5 kW mass-market automotive (gasoline) auxiliary power unit. This report highlights technical results of the work performed under the following tasks for the automotive 5 kW system: Task 1--System Design and Integration; Task 2--Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Stack Developments; Task 3--Reformer Developments; Task 4--Development of Balance of Plant (BOP) Components; Task 5--Manufacturing Development (Privately Funded); Task 6--System Fabrication; and Task 7--System Testing.