Hi all I am new to this group. I am pursuing my masters in electrical engineering. I have opted a control systems course in which I am facing difficulties. I am doing a small project to design a fan controller like a cooling system present in the cars. I am not good at designing the control systems. I want design it in Matlab/simulink I am good at simulink. I have a block diagram which gives the idea for the project. Can any one help me out in getting started with the cotroller design and what more specifications should I consider for the design. ( this doesn't allow me to post the block diagram) The basic working of the cooling system is, initially the cold water/coolant flows from Radiator through the water pump and gets warmed passing through the oil cooler and flows through the engine where it gets heated. An electric thermostat is used to by pass the water either into radiator where the coolant is cooled by a electric fan (20kw, 2000rpm) and is cycled back into engine through the water pump and oil cooler, the thermostat may also block the flow of coolant to the radiator and directly send into the water pump if the engine is below the operating temperature and when it reaches the operating temperature the thermostat opens and the coolant is passed through the radiator allowing it to cool down. Theere are temperature sensors that reads the temperature one located at the outlet of engine before the thermostat and second one after the water pump and third one after the oil cooler these allows us to design the controller for the model. The electric fan is variable speed fan and its speed is controlled by the speed command The position of thermostat and speed command for the fan is PWM signal (0-100% duty cycle)
Given Requirements
- Cooling fan mounted between radiator and engine (20 kw, 2000rpm)
- The performance of the fan would be same for the both directions
- The coolant temperature should be between 120 c to 140 c
- Max engine outlet temperature is 110
- Max radiator inlet is < 104 c and delta T across rad is 8 c
- Oil temperatures around 70 c to 100 c (Max temp allowed is 113 C)
- Air temperatures (predicted exiting the radiator) app 80 c
- Max heat sink temp