Applied Thermal Engineering 228 (2023) 120502

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Research Paper

An integrated thermal management strategy for cabin and battery heating

in range-extended electric vehicles under low-temperature conditions
Rong Guo *, Lu Li, Ziyi Sun, Xiang Xue
School of Automotive Studies, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, PR China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The integrated thermal management strategy under low-temperature conditions can effectively alleviate mileage
Low temperature anxiety associated with electric vehicles and improve the thermal comfort of the cabin. In this study, an inte­
Range-extended electric vehicles grated thermal management topology for range-extended electric vehicles is proposed, which recovers the waste
Thermal management system
heat from the range extender and the electric drive system for the heating of the battery and the cabin to improve
Waste heat recovery
energy utilization. Considering the driving modes and heating demands, the working modes and switching rules
Heating control strategy
Model predictive control are designed. Especially, a control-oriented coupling system model is established for pure-electric mode. Taking
cabin heat load demand, battery heat generation, and electric drive system heat generation as disturbances, a
model predictive controller is designed for the heating power of the heater. An integrated thermal management
system model verified by experiments is established in AMEsim. The initial temperature of the environment and
vehicle is − 20 ◦ C, and the target temperatures of the cabin and the battery are set at 20 ◦ C and 25 ◦ C respectively.
The feasibility of the strategy is verified by the co-simulation of Simulink and AMEsim under 4 WLTC cycles. The
results show that in the range-extended mode, the integrated system shortens the battery heating time and re­
duces fuel consumption by more than 10.2 % compared with the independent system. In pure-electric mode, the
heating speed of the proposed model predictive control strategy is slightly faster than that of the on–off strategy,
the heating energy consumption is reduced by 20.95 %, and the total energy consumption for propulsion and
thermal management decreased by 2.84 %.

1. Introduction
The increasingly serious energy shortage and environmental pollu­
tion promote the development of energy-saving, zero-pollution, and
zero-emission electric vehicles (EVs) [1]. However, seriously driving
mileage attenuation at subzero temperatures remains an unsolved
challenge [2]. At extremely low temperatures, a considerable increase in
internal resistance sharply reduces the power and the available capacity
of batteries [3,4]. Furthermore, additional energy is consumed for cabin
heating, commonly in the form of a positive temperature coefficient
(PTC) heater [5] and heat pump (HP) system [6]. Therefore, developing
an integrated thermal management strategy to heat the battery and
cabin with low energy consumption to improve battery efficiency and
cabin comfort, is a key and essential step to promote EVs’ popularization
at low temperatures.
Battery heating methods can be divided into internal heating and
external heating [7,8]. Internal heating heats the battery by generating
heat through current and internal resistance [9–12]. This method
shortens the battery heating time but at the expense of high energy
consumption. External heating relies on a thermal management system
that uses heat transfer mediums to transfer heat from an external heat
source to the battery pack, including air heating [2], liquid heating
[13–15], heat pipes [16], etc. Cabin heating relies on the heating core
and the blower, and the heat source mainly comes from the PTC heater
[5] or the HP system [6]. Normally, the cabin thermal management
system and the battery thermal management system are independent.
Range-extended electric vehicles (REEVs) contain an additional
range-extended system (RES) compared to EVs [17,18]. REEVs have
inherent advantages in reducing driving mileage attenuation at
extremely low temperatures [19]. The external heat sources in REEVs
are various, including the PTC, the range extender, and the electric drive
system (EDS). It is worth noting that the waste heat from the range
extender and the EDS is cost-free. Therefore, the heat generated from the
range extender can heat the cabin and battery, avoiding additional
thermal management energy consumption. The waste heat recovery
topological structure facilitates the above capabilities.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: guorong@tongji.edu.cn (R. Guo), 2031587@tongji.edu.cn (L. Li), 2011450@tongji.edu.cn (Z. Sun), xuexiang@tongji.edu.cn (X. Xue).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2023.120502
Received 28 November 2022; Received in revised form 19 February 2023; Accepted 28 March 2023
Available online 17 April 2023
1359-4311/© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
R. Guo et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 228 (2023) 120502

Fig. 1. Independent TMS for the REEV.

Fig. 2. Improved integrated TMS for the REEV.

Many researchers have carried out theoretical and applied research

Table 1
on integrated thermal management topology to improve the waste heat
Vehicle Physical Parameters.
utilization rate of the vehicle. Gissing et al. [20] and Engbroks et al. [21]
Symbol Parameters Values developed a cabin heating strategy combining the engine’s waste heat
m Vehicle mass (kg) 3200 and PTC heater for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and REEVs,
f Rolling resistance coefficient 0.007 respectively, which reduced the energy consumption of the PTC heater.
Cd Aerodynamic drag coefficient 0.45 Tian et al. [22] proposed an integrated electric vehicle thermal man­
A Windward area (m2) 2.756
rc Wheel rolling radius (m) 0.338
agement system for cabin thermal comfort, battery cooling, and motor
iEM Gear ratio 9.33 waste heat recovery. The results showed that the heating coefficient of
performance (COP) was increased up to 25.55 % with motor waste heat
recovery. However, their research only focuses on the integrated
structure design and mode-switching strategy, without an in-depth
discussion of the control algorithm of the actuator.

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Table 2 energy-saving potential.

Parameters of the lithium-ion cell. In this study, an integrated thermal management topology based on a
Property Parameters heat exchanger and a four-way solenoid valve is proposed. On this basis,
the working modes and switching rules are designed for different driving
Nominal capacity (Ah) 120
Nominal voltage (V) 3.6 modes and the heating demands of the cabin and the battery. The in­
Charge cut-off voltage (V) 4.2 tegrated system fully utilizes the heat from the range extender and the
Discharge cut-off voltage (V) 2.8 electric drive system for battery and cabin heating, to further improve
Density (kg.m− 3) 2080 the utilization of heat. In addition, in pure-electric mode, a heating
Size (x-, y-, z-) (mm) 45 × 148 × 174
Cathode material NCM
power control method considering thermal load disturbance based on
Anode material Graphite MPC is proposed to shorten the heating time and reduce energy con­
Specific heat capacity (J⋅kg− 1◦ C− 1) 1258 sumption. The main contributions are summarized as follows.
Thermal conductivity (W⋅m− 1◦ C -1) 1.025 (x-)
29.9 (y-)
• A novel integrated thermal management topology structure is pro­
29.9 (z-)
Number 1P96S posed considering the thermal comfort of the cabin and the heating
demand of the battery. The proposed mode-switching strategy
significantly reduces energy consumption.
Based on the integrated thermal management structure, many • A state-space model based on an integrated thermal management
advanced control algorithms have been proposed to optimize the per­ system is developed to realize the prediction of battery temperature.
formance of the heating process. Min et al. [15] proposed a fuzzy control The developed model is adopted for the design of the model pre­
strategy for the PTC heater, which could meet the heating requirements dictive controller.
of the cabin and battery while delaying the aging of the battery. But this • A heating power control method based on MPC is proposed, and the
strategy does not reduce energy consumption. Liu et al. [23] proposed a feasibility and superiority of the strategy are verified by the co-
dynamic coordinated control strategy for the cabin and battery thermal simulation of Simulink and AMEsim. Compared with the mode-
management system. Results revealed that there was a 6.5 % improve­ switching strategy, the MPC strategy further reduces energy
ment in overall energy consumption. Li et al. [24] designed a coupled consumption.
thermal management structure combining the range extender and the
battery. The proposed fuzzy controller efficiently reduced the battery It is worth noting that the core contribution of this paper is to derive
heating time and improved the energy utilization efficiency. However, the state space equation of an integrated thermal management system.
the parameter-setting process of fuzzy control depends on expert expe­ The model can provide a reference for the development of more opti­
rience. And there is no accurate evaluation standard for energy mization algorithms for integrated thermal management systems. The
consumption. rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 establishes the elec­
Based on the above investigation, the existing research on integrated trothermal coupling model of the battery pack, the cabin thermal model,
thermal management for REEVs only considers one coupling structure, and the efficiency and thermal model of the range extender and the
such as the range extender heating the cabin [21] or heating the battery
[23]. Actually, the thermal management system includes the range
extender circuit, electric drive system circuit, battery circuit, and air
conditioning circuit. Currently, there is no research on the coordinated
control of the heat flow of all the circuits. We attempt to address this
research gap that coupling the thermal management system of all the
circuits to achieve overall thermal management control and obtain the
improvement of the energy utilization efficiency. In addition, the inte­
grated thermal management system is highly nonlinear and complex.
Currently, the coordination control methods are rule-based, such as
deterministic rules [20–22] and fuzzy rules [15,24]. The application of a
control strategy based on optimization in integrated thermal manage­
ment has not been fully discussed. Model predictive control (MPC) has
been adopted for battery cooling or cabin cooling, which has proved to
be effective and energy-saving [25,26]. It is worth noting that this paper
is the first to apply MPC to an integrated thermal management system
with heat recovery in REEVs, which will help to further improve the Fig. 4. Equivalent circuit model for the battery.

Fig. 3. Battery electro-thermal model.

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Fig. 5. Simplified thermal model of BTMS.

Fig. 6. Simplification and validation process of the BTMS model. (a) Test, (b) Cell verification, (c) Cell temperature difference, (d) 3D model to 1D model.

Fig. 7. Simplification of BTMS from 3D to 1D.

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Fig. 8. Efficiency map of the EDS.

Fig. 9. The power flow of the EDS.

electric drive system. Section 3 introduces the energy management
strategy, thermal management topology, mode-switching control strat­
egy, and MPC development process. The effectiveness of the strategy is
verified in Section 4. Section 5 summarizes the paper.
2. REEV dynamic and thermal model
The research object of this paper is a range-extended electric logistics
vehicle. The thermal management system (TMS) of the vehicle consists
of four circuits, as shown in Fig. 1. The battery circuit switches the

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2.1. Vehicle dynamics model

When the vehicle is operating, the traction from the powertrain

needs to overcome aerodynamic drag, rolling resistance, grade resis­
tance, and acceleration resistance. The required power can be calculated
by Eq. (1).
( )
v Cd Av2 m dv
Preq = ⋅ + mgsinθ + mgcosθ⋅f + ⋅ (1)
3.6 21.15 3.6 dt
where Preq is the required driving power (W), v is the vehicle velocity
(km⋅h− 1), θ is the road slope, and g is the gravitational acceleration
(m⋅s− 2). The definitions, values, and units of the vehicle parameters are
shown in Table 1.
In pure-electric mode, the driving power is provided by the battery
Fig. 10. The simplified thermal model of the EDS.
pack. In range-extended mode, the battery pack and the generator
together provide the driving power. The battery power could be
heating and the cooling circuits through the three-way solenoid valve to expressed as Eq. (2),
maintain the battery at the optimal operating temperature. The air
conditioning circuit can realize the refrigeration of the cabin under high- Pbat =
Preq
− Pgen + Pheater + Paux (2)
temperature environments. The EDS circuit is adopted to control the ηeds ⋅ηT
temperature of the motor, the generator, the motor control unit (MCU), where ηeds is the efficiency of the EDS, ηT is the efficiency of the
the generator control unit (GCU), the power distribution unit (PDU), and transmission system, Pgen is the generator power (W), Pheater is the PTC
the DC/DC. The three-way solenoid valve realizes the switching of the heater power (W), Paux is the power of the auxiliary consumer loads
heating circuit and cooling circuit for the battery thermal management except PTC heater (W).
system (BTMS). The cabin heating circuit is connected in parallel to the
internal combustion engine (ICE) cooling circuit. In range-extended
mode, the cabin is heated by the ICE coolant heat. However, in pure-
electric mode, the three-way valve on the ICE side is closed, and the Table 3
PTC is adopted to heat the cabin. Parameters of the cabin thermal model.
Based on the above TMS topology, an improved integrated TMS with Symbols Definitions Values References
waste heat recovery is proposed, as shown in Fig. 2. The improved
– Vehicle size (m) 4.495 × 1.68 × Measured
design cancels the extra PTC of the battery circuit, and the battery is 1.99
heated by the cabin circuit and the EDS circuit. When the ICE coolant – Cabin size (m) 1.0 × 1.68 × 1.79 Measured
temperature is high, directly heating the battery may lead to excessive Vcab Cabin volume (m3) 3 Measured
local temperature, which may cause danger. Therefore, indirect heat ρair Air density (kg⋅m− 3) 1.29 –
ma Cabin air mass (kg) 3.87 Measured
exchange between the battery circuit and the cabin circuit is realized Cr Wall thermal capacity (J⋅◦ C− 1) 7000 Estimated
through a plate heat exchanger. A four-way solenoid valve is set between Sroof Roof area (m2) 1.68 Measured
the battery circuit and the EDS circuit to realize the series connection Sside_door Side door area (m2) 1.79 Measured
and parallel connection. In parallel mode, the battery is only heated by Sfront_win Front windshield area (m2) 1.24 Measured
Sin Internal heat exchange surface 6.3 Measured
the cabin circuit. In series mode, the heat generated by the EDS is also
(m2)
used to heat the battery. The improved topology combined with the Sext External heat exchange surface 6.5 Measured
corresponding thermal management control strategy can effectively (m2)
reduce the energy consumption of the thermal management system, and Psolar Solar flux (W⋅m− 2) 500 Estimated
improve the heating speed. Qp Body heat (W) 100 [30]

Fig. 11. Heat load within a vehicle cabin.

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Fig. 12. Parameters of heater, pump, and radiator model.

Fig. 13. Energy management strategy based on rules.

2.2. Electro-thermal model for the battery An equivalent circuit model is selected as the electrical model for the
batteries due to its low computational complexity, and good robustness,
The structural and thermal physical parameters of the battery carried as shown in Fig. 4. The battery pack consists of 8 series-connected
by the REEV in this study are provided by the manufacturer, as shown in modules, each of which has 12 series-connected cells. Uoc and R are
Table 2. Fig. 3 shows the battery electro-thermal model and the rela­ open-circuit voltage and internal resistance of the battery pack,
tionship between the submodels. The battery current depends on tem­ respectively.
perature, state of charge (SOC), and required power. The heat The battery current is calculated by Eq. (3),
generation rate of the battery is related to temperature, SOC, and cur­ √̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
rent. Therefore, the electrical model and the thermal model of the bat­ Uoc − U 2oc − 4RPbat
tery are coupled. I= (3)
2R
1) Electrical model.

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Fig. 14. Variable working modes in integrated TMS.

The battery terminal voltage Ubat is calculated by Eq. (4), ( )

dTb Tp − Tb
Ubat = Uoc − IR (4) cb Mb
dt
= Qgen − Qfree +
Rb
(6)
The calculation of SOC is shown in Eq. (5), where Q is the nominal Rb =
δb
battery capacity (Ah), and SOC0 is the initial SOC of the battery. λb ⋅Ab
∫t
Idt where cb is the specific heat capacity of the battery (J⋅kg− 1◦ C -1), Mb
SOC = SOC0 − 0 (5) is the battery mass (kg), Tp is the cooling plate temperature (◦ C), Qfree is
3600Q
the heat transfer by natural convection (W), Rb is the thermal conduc­
2) Thermal model. tivity resistance between the battery and the cooling plate (◦ C⋅W− 1), λb is
a) Heat generation model. the battery thermal conductivity (W⋅m− 1 ◦ C -1), δb is the heat conduction
The heat generated from a lithium-ion battery consists of mainly-two distance (m), Ab is the heat conduction area (m2).
parts, irreversible heat from the internal resistance and reversible heat The cooling plate is the intermediate medium for heat transfer be­
by the entropy change [27], according to Bernardi model [28], as pre­ tween the battery and the coolant, and its temperature is assumed to be
sented in Eq. (6) uniform. There is a temperature difference between the coolant and the
dE cooling plate, which causes convection and heat exchange. The gov­
Qgen = I 2 R − ITb (6) erning equation of the cooling plate is
dTb
( )
where Qgen is the heat generation rate (W), R is the internal resistance cp Mp
dTp
=
Tb − Tp
+
ΔT
(Ω), consists of polarization resistance and ohm resistance, I and Tb are dt Rb Rp
(7)
the operating current (A) and the battery temperature (K), dE/dTb is the 1
entropy coefficient (V⋅◦ C − 1). Rp =
hp ⋅Ap
b) Battery thermal management system.
The simplified thermal model of BTMS is shown in Fig. 5. The heat The governing equation of the coolant is
generated inside the battery is transferred to the battery surface and the ( ) ΔT
cooling plate through heat conduction. The control equation of battery ṁb c Tcp in − Tcp out =
Rp
temperature can be expressed as (8)
1( )
ΔT = Tcp out + Tcp in − Tp
2

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Fig. 15. Mode switching rules for integrated TMS.

Fig. 16. The derivation process of the battery temperature prediction model.

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R. Guo et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 228 (2023) 120502

Table 4 thermal model of the battery and BTMS.

The dimensionless weight coefficient. Based on the heat generation model established, the cell temperature
Coefficient Values distribution is calculated by the three-dimensional computational fluid
dynamics (CFD) at the ambient temperature of 25 ◦ C and discharging
ωyi,j [0, 150, 0, 0, 10, 0]
rate of 0.5C and 1.0C. Compared with the cell temperature rise test, the
ωui,j 0.05
errors at the discharging rate of 0.5C and 1.0C are 0.510 ◦ C and
ωΔu 10
i,j
1.435 ◦ C, respectively.
ρε 100,000
A module consists of 12 series-connected cells. Similar to the cell
temperature distribution simulation, the three-dimensional CFD method
where cp and c are the specific heat capacities of the cooling plate and is adopted at the mass flow rate of 0.05 kg⋅s− 1. Fig. 6(c) shows that the
the coolant (J⋅kg− 1◦ C -1), Mp is the cooling plate mass (kg), Tcp_in and maximum temperature difference among the cells is 0.86 ◦ C at the dis­
Tcp_out are the coolant inlet and outlet temperature (◦ C), ṁb is the mass charging rate of 1.0C, which is very small. Therefore, a module can be
flow rate of the coolant (kg⋅s− 1), Rp is the convection heat transfer treated as a homogeneous and uniform solid.
resistance between the coolant and the cooling plate (◦ C⋅W− 1), hp is the Fig. 7 shows the simplified process of the battery pack model. A
convective heat transfer coefficient (W⋅m− 2◦ C− 1), Ap is the convection battery pack consists of 8 series-connected modules. The battery pack is
heat transfer area (m2), ΔT is the mean temperature difference between simplified to 8 equivalent heat capacities. The one-dimensional model of
the cooling plate and the coolant (◦ C). the battery pack is built in AMESim. With a parameter identification of
3) Verification of electro-thermal model for battery. thermal conductivity resistance, the relative calculation errors of one-
The simplification and verification process from the cell to the bat­ dimensional and three-dimensional models for battery temperature
tery pack with BTMS is divided into four steps, as shown in Fig. 6. Ap­ and coolant temperature are less than 2.0 % and 1.2 %, respectively.
pendix A shows the detailed steps for establishing and verifying the

Fig. 17. The MPC process for the integrated TMS.

Fig. 18. WLTC and vehicle speed following.

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Fig. 19. The temperature trajectories for battery and cabin heating. (a) Battery
Fig. 21. SOC and fuel consumption curves of the vehicle. (a) Fuel consumption,
temperature, (b) Cabin temperature.
(b) SOC.

Table 5
Battery heating time and energy consumption comparison.
Independent TMS, Independent TMS, Integrated
2 kW 4 kW TMS

Battery heating time, s 4678 3449 2845

PTC energy 2.894 4.094 0.854
consumption, kWh
Fuel consumption, L 9.187 9.510 8.248

Table 6
Three battery and cabin heating strategies.
PTC power Four-way solenoid
valve

Strategy 1: Temperature Parallel

Passive PTC strategy w/o EDS heat-
recovery
Strategy 2: Temperature Parallel/series
Passive PTC strategy with EDS heat- (rules)
recovery
Strategy 3: Active Parallel/series
MPC-based strategy with EDS heat- control (rules)
recovery

where ηM represents the efficiency of the motor or the generator, and

Fig. 20. The power and energy consumption of PTCs. (a) PTC power, (b) PTC ηcontroller represents the efficiency of the MCU or the GCU.
energy consumption. The energy flow of the electric drive system is shown in Fig. 9. When
the motor is adopted to provide driving power, the relationship between
2.3. Electric drive system model motor shaft power and battery discharge power can be expressed as
1
Pbat = PM ⋅ (9)
1) Efficiency model. discharge
ηeds
The electric drive systems (EDS) are modeled utilizing the efficiency
map. The efficiency map is tested and calibrated by the motor manu­ When the motor is adopted as a generator, the relationship between
facturer, as shown in Fig. 8. A positive value means driving and a motor shaft power and battery charge power can be expressed as
negative value means generating electricity. The efficiency of the EDS Pbat charge = PM ⋅ηeds (10)
consists of motor efficiency and controller efficiency,
where PM is the shaft power of the motor or the generator (W),
ηeds = ηM × ηcontroller (8) Pbat_charge and Pbat_discharge are the charge and discharge powers of the

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R. Guo et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 228 (2023) 120502

battery (W), respectively.

2) Heat generation model for the EDS.
The heat generation mechanism of the EDS is complex. A bench test
is adopted to measure the heat generation rates at different working
points. Appendix B shows the detailed steps for establishing and veri­
fying the EDS thermal model.
The test principle is based on the thermal balance of the motor and
the controller. When the motor and the controller are in thermal bal­
ance, the heat generation rate of the EDS is equal to the heat dissipation
rate,
Qeds = ṁeds c(Teds out − Teds in ) (11)
where Qeds is the heat generation rate of the EDS (W), ṁeds is the mass
flow rate of the EDS circuit (kg⋅s− 1), Teds_in and Teds_out are the coolant
inlet and outlet temperature (◦ C).
3) Thermal management model for the EDS.
The simplified thermal model of EDS is shown in Fig. 10. The thermal
model of the motor is similar to that of the battery. The difference is that
the heat conduction structure inside the motor is a cylinder, instead of a
wall. Therefore, the calculation method of heat conduction resistance is
different. The governing equation of the motor is
dTmot Tw − Tmot
cmot Mmot = Qmot +
dt Rmot
( ) (12)
1 rw
Rmot = ln
2π λmot lmot rmot
where cmot is the specific heat capacity of the motor (J⋅kg− 1◦ C -1),
Mmot is the motor mass (kg), Tw is the cooling jacket temperature (◦ C),
Fig. 22. The solenoid valve signal. (a) Parallel-series signal, (b) Battery heat­ Rmot is the thermal conductivity resistance between the motor and the
ing/cooling signal. cooling jacket (◦ C⋅W− 1), λmot is the motor thermal conductivity
(W⋅m− 1◦ C -1), lmot is the axial length of motor (m), rw and rmot are the
radius of the motor’s equivalent heat particle and the cooling jacket (m),
respectively.
The governing equation of the cooling jacket is
dTw Tmot − Tw ΔTm
cw Mw = −
dt Rmot Rw
(13)
1
Rw =
hw ⋅Aw
The governing equation of the coolant is
ΔTm
ṁeds c(Tmot out − Tmot in ) =
Rw
(14)
1
ΔTm = Tw − (Tmot out + Tmot in )
2
where cw is the specific heat capacity of the jacket (J⋅kg− 1◦ C− 1), Mw is
the cooling jacket mass (kg), Tmot_in and Tmot_out are the coolant inlet and
outlet temperature (◦ C), ṁeds is the mass flow rate of the coolant (kg⋅s− 1),
Rw is the convection heat transfer resistance between the coolant and the
cooling jacket (◦ C⋅W− 1), hw is the convective heat transfer coefficient
(W⋅m− 2◦ C− 1), Aw is the convection heat transfer area (m2), ΔTm is the
mean temperature difference between the cooling jacket and the coolant
(◦ C).
The controller is thin, ignoring heat conduction, assuming that its
internal heat is evenly generated and the temperature is evenly
distributed. The thermal control equation of the controller can be
expressed as
dTcon ΔTc
ccon Mcon = Qcon −
dt Rcon
(15)
1
Rcon =
hcon ⋅Acon
The governing equation of the coolant is
Fig. 23. Temperature trajectories of the battery and the coolant. (a) Strategy 1,
(b) Strategy 2, (c) Strategy 3.

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Fig. 24. Heating time for different battery temperatures.

the thermal energy of the fuel, ge is the fuel consumption rate

(kg⋅kWh− 1), Ne is the ICE power (kW), hu is the low calorific value of
fuel, and hu = 44000 kJ⋅kg− 1.
The heat that needs to be carried away by the coolant accounts for
about 29 % of the total fuel energy [29]. The heat carried away by the
coolant at 25 kW steady state was also tested in the experiments in
Appendix B. The results showed that the coolant carried away 28 % of
the total energy. The engine thermal model is equivalent to a 24.06 kW
heat source to simulate the coolant outlet temperature.

2.5. Cabin thermal model

The established cabin thermal model only considers the heating

condition. The heat load of the cabin and its transfer path are shown in
Fig. 11. The model considers the effects of solar radiation heat, body
heat, external convection heat transfer, and air conditioning heat on the
cabin temperature. The solar radiation load is determined by the
weather and time of day, and the average solar radiation load in winter
is taken in the model. The total heat load of the cabin Qcab can be
expressed as
Qcab = Qsolar + Qconv + Qp + QAC (18)

The air temperature in the cabin Ta is

dTa
ma ca = Qsolar + Qconv + Qp + QAC (19)
dt
where Ta represents the air temperature in the cabin (◦ C), ma is the
air mass in the cabin (kg), and ca is the specific heat capacity of air
(J⋅kg− 1◦ C -1).
The heat convection Qconv is related to the vehicle speed and the
ambient temperature. It can be obtained by solving
Fig. 25. PTC circuit and air conditioning temperatures. (a) Strategy 1, (b) Qconv = hconv ext Sext (Tr − Tamb ) (20)
Strategy 2, (c) Strategy 3.
where hconv_ext is the heat transfer coefficient between the vehicle
surface and the external environment (W⋅m− 2◦ C− 1), and Tr and Sext
ΔTc
ṁeds c(Tcon out − Tcon in ) = respectively are the average temperature (◦ C) and total area (m2) of the
Rcon
(16) external cabin roof.
ΔT = Tcon −
1
(Tcon out + Tcon in ) The cabin surface is affected both by solar radiation, external con­
2 vection, and internal convection. According to the law of energy con­
The definitions of relevant parameters can refer to the above motor servation, the temperature of the cabin roof Tr is expressed as
thermal model.
dTr
Cr = Qsolar + Qconv − hconv in Sin (Tr − Ta ) (21)
dt
2.4. ICE thermal model where hconv_in is the heat transfer coefficient between the internal
surface and the air in the cabin (W⋅m− 2◦ C− 1), Sin is the total area of the
The engine operates only at the optimum efficiency point. The heat internal cabin surface (m2), Cr is the thermal capacity of the surface
carried away by the coolant is calculated by Eq. (17) (J⋅◦ C− 1).
The parameters of the cabin thermal model are shown in Table 3. The
ge Ne hu cabin and carriage are separated. The cabin is simplified into a cuboid.
QICE = α⋅ (17)
3600 The bottom and rear of the cabin are considered to be adiabatic. The
where α is the percentage of heat transferred to the cooling system to cabin exchanges heat with the environment through the air-

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R. Guo et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 228 (2023) 120502

Fig. 26. Temperature trajectories of the cabin.

conditioning, front windshield, doors on both sides, and roof. The

ambient temperature and solar flux are set to − 20 ◦ C and 500 W⋅m− 2
which are normal in the winter of Harbin, China.

2.6. Components models of the thermal management system

All the component models of the TMS can be found in AMEsim with
detailed instructions. The key parameters of some models, including the
heater model, pump model, radiator model, and coolant, are shown in
Fig. 12.
The internal resistance of the PTC heater increases with the increase
in temperature, and the heating power decreases with the increase in
temperature. When the PTC temperature reaches curie temperature, the
internal resistance rises sharply, and the PTC surface temperature is
maintained at a constant value, to ensure that the temperature of the
liquid will not rise continuously. The heating power of the PTC can be
Fig. 27. Power and energy consumption of PTC heater.
expressed as,
2
Ubat
Table 7 Qptc = (22)
Rptc
Energy consumption comparison of three strategies.
Strategy Strategy Strategy 3 Improve
Taking PTC as the comparison benchmark, this paper adopts the
1 2 heater with adjustable heating power to study the performance of
heating the cabin and the battery. The pump model is based on the H-Q
Energy consumption, Wh 3199 2064.5 1873.5 − 9.25 %
(heated to 25 ◦ C) curve at the rated speed given by the manufacturer. The radiator model
Energy consumption, Wh (4 3474 3385 2675.7 − 20.95 % is based on the test. Under the specific air–liquid temperature difference,
WLTCs) measure the heat dissipation of the radiator under different wind speeds
SOC_end 32.649 % 33.461 % 35.266 % and different coolant flow rates. The actual heat exchange is calculated
Total energy consumption, 27.46 27.11 26.34 − 2.84 %
kWh
according to the heat exchange map. Ethylene glycol (50 %) is selected
as the coolant of all the thermal management circuits.

14
R. Guo et al.
Fig. 28. Battery heating process at various ambient temperatures.
Fig. 29. Cabin heating process at various ambient temperatures.
3. REEV control strategy
3.1. Energy management strategy based on rules
Thermostat control strategy is applied to the energy management of
the vehicle, as shown in Fig. 13. When SOC is higher than SOChigh, the
vehicle operates in pure-electric mode. When SOC is lower than SOClow,
the range extender starts. To avoid frequent starting of the RE, when
SOC is between SOClow and SOChigh, the range extender will maintain the
last working state. SOClow and SOChigh are set to 0.20 and 0.22, respec­
tively. The range extender always works at the optimal efficiency point,
and Pgen is set at 25 kW.
3.2. TMS working mode description
To maintain the thermal comfort of the cabin, warm air is required.
To ensure the low-temperature performance of the vehicle and improve
the battery efficiency and life, the battery should be heated to the
optimal operating temperature. The waste heat of the range extender
and the EDS is recycled to reduce the energy consumption of heating the
battery and the cabin.Depending on the vehicle’s driving mode, battery
heating demand, and cabin heating demand, six working modes are
designed for the thermal management system, as shown in Fig. 14.
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Applied Thermal Engineering 228 (2023) 120502
In pure-electric mode, with the battery heating demand, the TMS
switches to Mode 1 or Mode 2. When the EDS circuit temperature is
more than 2 ◦ C higher than the battery circuit, the series mode is
adopted (Mode 2). When the EDS circuit temperature does not meet this
condition, to reduce the thermal loss of PTC power, PTC only heats the
battery (Mode 1). In both working modes, the cabin is heated through
the blower and the heating core. When there is no heating demand for
both the battery and the cabin, the PTC and the PTC pump are turned off,
and the battery circuit switches to the temperature-maintaining mode
(Mode 3). Mode 4 applies to the case that the cabin has a heating de­
mand but the battery has no heating demand, and the PTC only heats the
cabin.
In range-extended mode, the operation of the range extender is
accompanied by abundant heat sources. Mode 5 is applicable when the
battery needs heating. The battery circuit and EDS circuit are connected
in series and heated by the range extender high-temperature coolant.
When there is no heating demand for the battery, Mode 6 is applicable.
In both Mode 5 and Mode 6, the cabin is heated through the blower and
the heating core.
3.3. Mode switching rules
Mode switching rules are formulated through the ICE on/off signal,
battery heating signal, cabin heating signal, and EDS heat recycling
signal. When the EDS circuit temperature is more than 2 ◦ C higher than
the battery circuit, the EDS heat recycling signal is 1, otherwise, it is 0.
The logic diagram of mode switching is shown in Fig. 15.
3.4. MPC-based strategy
In range-extended mode, the waste heat of the range extender heats
the cabin and the battery without additional power consumption. The
mode-switching strategy is sufficient to deal with the heating of the
cabin and battery. However, in pure-electric mode, the PTC heater
consumes additional electric energy as a heat source. The control
strategy of the PTC heater is worthy of further study, which is committed
to improving the heating speed and reducing the heating energy con­
sumption. A model predictive controller considering the heating time
and the energy consumption is established.
R. Guo et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 228 (2023) 120502

Fig. 30. PTC power and energy consumption at various ambient temperatures.

Fig. 31. PTC total energy consumption at various ambient temperatures.

1) Prediction model. The matrix of state variable × is

The integrated TMS is simplified to explore the effects of PTC heating
power and thermal load disturbance on battery temperature. The model
is only applicable to battery heating (Mode 1 and Mode 2). The
simplification and derivation process of the model is shown in Fig. 16.
Appendix C shows the state space equation of the battery temperature
control system. The state space equation of the system can be expressed
as
{ v = [Qgen , Qfree , QAC , Qeds ]
ẋ = Ax + Bu + Ev
(23)
y = Cx
where × is the state variables of the battery temperature control
system; u and v are the matrices of the control variables and input dis­
turbances of the estimator respectively; y is the output variable of the
system; A, B, and E are the constant matrices based on the current state
x; C is the coefficient describing the relationship between the future
system output y and the current state x.
x = [Tptc , Tb , Tp , Th , Tptc in , Tcp in ] (24)
The expressions of u and v are
u = Qptc (25)
and
(26)
The output variables of the estimator y are
y = [Tptc , Tb , Tp , Th , Tptc in , Tcp in ] (27)
The prediction model is linearised and discretized to reduce calcu­
lation and improve calculation speed. The first-order differential
approximation at operation points is used for the model linearization,
and the zero-order hold method is applied to the model discretization.
At time step k, the estimator in the prediction horizon p is

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R. Guo et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 228 (2023) 120502

penalty weight and slack variable at control interval k respectively.

The optimization objective and the restrictions in the optimizer are
as follows:
Optimization objective:min{J(zk )}
Hard restrictions:
0 W ≤ Qptc ≤ 5000 W.
− 500 W⋅s− 1 ≤ ΔQptc ≤ 500 W⋅s− 1.
Soft restrictions:
50 ◦ C ≤ Tptc ≤ 60 ◦ C.
35 ◦ C ≤ Tptc_in ≤ 50 ◦ C.
The purpose of hard restrictions is to keep the heating power within
the rated operating range. The soft restrictions are designed to limit the
coolant temperature range to ensure safety and cabin heating demands.
In the study, the prediction horizon is set to 60 s. To reduce the
computational cost and obtain the optimal control output, the control
horizon is set to 10 s. The QP method gives the successive output zk in
the prediction horizon p,
[ ]
zTk = u(k|k)T u(k + 1|k)T ... u(k + p − 1|k)T εk (31)

In Eq.(31), only the first term in zk , namely u(k|k)T , is used as the

actual control output of the MPC at every control interval to maintain
the dynamic accuracy of the real-time adjustment. To facilitate com­
parison, the weight factor was adjusted to make the battery heating time
close to the passive PTC heating method, and the energy consumed was
adopted as the evaluation index of the performance. The weighting
factors set are in Table 4.
3) Feedback compensation.
After the actual control is applied to the system, the sensors monitor
the real-time state variables. In the next rolling optimization, the MPC
controller solves the optimal control increment sequence in the predic­
Fig. 32. SOC at various ambient temperatures. tion time domain at the next time according to the new state variables to
obtain new control variables and then realizes control cyclically. There
are eight modules in the battery pack and the average temperature of
x(k + i|k) = Ax(k + i − 1|k) + Bu(k + i − 1|k) + Ev(k + i − 1|k)
(28) which is taken as the current state variable of the battery temperature.
y(k + i|k) = Cx(k + i − 1|k)
The MPC process for integrated TMS is shown in Fig. 17.
where i is the successive time step, varying from 1 to p.
2) Optimizer. 4. Results and discussions
Battery temperature control is a tracking problem. The output vari­
able is expected to be as close to the reference trajectory as possible with The ambient temperature and the initial temperature of the vehicle
minimal energy consumption. In this study, the quadratic programming were set to − 20 ◦ C. The battery and the cabin target temperatures were
(QP) method is selected as the optimization algorithm for the optimizer. set to 25 ◦ C and 20 ◦ C, respectively. The air velocity was related to the
The cost function in the prediction interval consists of four parts: vehicle speed. World Light Vehicle Test Cycle (WLTC) is shown in
J(zk ) = Jy (zk ) + Ju (zk ) + JΔu (zk ) + Jε (zk ) (29) Fig. 18. The driving cycle is divided into the low-speed part, medium-
speed part, high-speed part, and extra high-speed part. The whole
Jy (zk ) reflects the control error between the battery temperature and cycle continues to 1800 s with a total mileage of 23.25 km, which is close
the reference trajectory. Ju (zk ) determines the energy consumption of to the actual driving conditions. As the maximum speed of the driving
the system. JΔu (zk ) is to avoid frequent large fluctuations in PTC power. motor is 8000 r/min, the maximum speed of the vehicle is maintained at
Jε (zk ) quantifies the worst-case constraint violation and improves the 118 km/h during the simulation. Four WLTC cycles were selected to test
possibility to obtain feasible solutions. the thermal management control strategy.
At current control interval k, Jy (zk ),Ju (zk ),JΔu (zk ), and Jε (zk ) in the
prediction horizon p are
4.1. Waste heat recovery in range-extended mode
ny ∑
∑ p
{ [
y
] }2
Jy (zk ) = ω rj (k + i|k) − yj (k + i|k)
j=1 i=1
i,j
To demonstrate the superiority of the integrated TMS with waste
p− 1 {
heat recovery, an independent TMS is adopted as a reference. The in­
nu ∑
∑ [ ] }2 dependent TMS shown in Fig. 1, contains two PTCs for cabin and battery
Ju (zk ) = ωui,j uj (k + i|k)
j=1 i=0 (30) heating, respectively. The initial SOC of the battery is 0.2, and the SOC is
p− 1 { maintained in the range of 0.20 and 0.22 through the operation of the
nu ∑
∑ [ ] }2
JΔu (zk ) = ωΔu
i,j uj (k + i|k) − uj (k + i − 1|k) range extender. When the battery SOC is 0.2, two specifications of the
j=1 i=0 battery PTC with the maximum power of 2 kW and 4 kW are studied.
Jε (zk ) = ρε ε2k Fig. 19(a) shows the battery heating process. It takes 2845 s for the
battery to reach the target temperature with waste heat recovery.
where ny and nu are the numbers of output variables and manipulated However, when the battery is heated through independent PTCs of 2 kW
variables, respectively; ωyi,j ,ωui,j , and ωΔu
i,j are the dimensionless weight and 4 kW, the heating times are 4678 s and 3449 s, respectively.
coefficient for the jth output variable at the ith prediction horizon step for Therefore, the integrated TMS shortens the battery heating time
y, u, and Δu respectively; ρε and εk are dimensionless constraint violation compared to the independent TMS.

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R. Guo et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 228 (2023) 120502

Fig. A1. Hardware setup for cell test.

Fig. 19(b) shows the cabin temperature. When the range extender is independent TMSs. Compared with the independent TMSs with the PTC
in operation, due to sufficient heat, the cabin temperature tends to be power of 2 kW and 5 kW, the integrated TMS shortens the battery
the same under the three TMSs. However, when the range extender is heating time by 39.1 % and 17.5 %, but the cabin heating speed is
turned off at 180 s, the integrated TMS with only one PTC significantly slightly slower. The integrated TMS reduces PTC energy consumption by
slows down the heating speed of the cabin. This is due to the battery 2.04 kWh and 3.24 kWh. The fuel consumption of the vehicle with in­
circuit diverting some of the heating power, resulting in less power used tegrated TMS has been reduced by 10.2 % and 13.3 %.
to heat the cabin, and the heating rate is slowed down. The high-
temperature coolant of the range extender at 80 to 100 ◦ C is used for
4.2. MPC performance in pure-electric mode
heating when the range extender is in operation. When the range
extender is turned off, the liquid in the circuit is heated through the PTC.
This study compares the effects of three control strategies on battery
The cabin temperature fluctuates between 18 ◦ C and 21 ◦ C when the
and cabin heating performance, as shown in Table 6. For strategy 1 and
range extender is switched on/off. The PID controller is able to quickly
strategy 2, the PTC heaters adjust the heating power according to the
adjust the cabin temperature to the target temperature.
temperature-resistance characteristics. In strategy 3, the PTC heater
Fig. 20 shows the total PTC power and the energy consumed by the
power can be actively controlled. In strategy 1, the four-way solenoid
PTC. For integrated TMS, the PTC starts and heats the cabin and battery
valve is kept in parallel, and EDS heat recovery is not performed. In
only when the RANGE EXTENDER is turned off. For independent TMS,
strategy 2 and strategy 3, the four-way solenoid valve switches parallel
high-power PTC shortens the battery heating time, but at the cost of
and series states according to rules to achieve reasonable EDS heat
higher energy consumption. After four WLTCs, the PTC energy con­
recovery.
sumption of the integrated TMS is 0.854 kWh, while that of the inde­
1) Mode switching.
pendent TMSs are 2.894 kWh and 4.094 kWh, respectively.
Fig. 22 shows the solenoid valve signal. At 780 s, the EDS circuit
Considering the influence of battery temperature and PTC power on
reaches the preheating condition, and the four-way solenoid valve’s
vehicle energy consumption, Fig. 21 shows the SOC and the fuel con­
working mode is switched from parallel to series. EDS heat recovery is
sumption curves of the vehicle. The initial SOC and termination SOC of
only applied when the battery is heated. When the battery temperature
the three strategies are the same, but the SOC change process is different
first reaches 25 ◦ C, the operation mode of the four-way solenoid valve
due to the influence of the battery temperature and the PTC power. The
switches from series to parallel and stays in parallel thereafter. When the
impact on vehicle economy is reflected in fuel consumption. With in­
battery temperature reaches 25 ◦ C, the three-way solenoid valve
tegrated TMS, the fuel consumption is 8.248 L. With independent TMSs,
switches to cooling mode. When the temperature is below 24 ◦ C, the
the fuel consumptions are 9.187 L and 9.510 L, respectively.
three-way solenoid valve switches to heating mode. Therefore, the
Table 5 summarizes the performances of the integrated TMS and the
battery temperature is maintained between 24 ◦ C and 25 ◦ C.

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R. Guo et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 228 (2023) 120502

Fig. A2. Cell resistance and entropy coefficient. (a) Resistance, (b) Entropy coefficient.

Fig. A3. Internal temperature field of the cell.

2) Battery heating.
The temperature trajectories of the battery and the battery circuit
coolant under three control strategies are shown in Fig. 23. Strategy 2
and Strategy 3 with EDS heat recovery heat the battery significantly
faster than strategy 1. It takes 6515 s for strategy 1 to heat the battery
from − 20 ◦ C to 25 ◦ C. The weight coefficient of the MPC controller is
adjusted in favor of energy saving. Therefore, the battery heating time of
strategy 2 and strategy 3 is similar, which are 3925 s and 4078 s,
respectively.
Fig. 23(b) shows that the coolant temperature rises significantly
faster when the EDS circuit and the battery circuit are connected in
series than in parallel. This increases the temperature difference be­
tween the battery and the coolant, enhances heat transfer, and therefore
heats faster. This indicates that the rules can effectively use part of EDS
heat generation for battery heating, and improve the energy utilization
rate of EDS. According to the temperature-internal resistance charac­
teristics of the battery, the internal resistance of the battery increases
sharply at low-temperature. Under the premise of providing the same
output power, the current and internal resistance of the battery in low-
temperature are larger than those in normal temperatures, resulting in
greater heat generation and more serious battery aging. And it takes
time to heat the coolant. Therefore, in the initial heating stage, the
temperature rise of the battery mainly depends on its heat generation,
and the temperature rise curves of the three strategies almost coincide.
Fig. 24 shows the time for the battery to reach each temperature. During
the heating process from − 20 ◦ C to 10 ◦ C, the heating rate of strategy 3 is

19
R. Guo et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 228 (2023) 120502

Fig. A4. Comparison of test and simulation of the cell temperature.

Fig. A5. Temperature field of the module with cooling plate.

heating stage. After the control error is reduced, the coolant temperature
Table A1
is gradually reduced to improve the economy. Under the three strate­
1-D thermal model parameters of the module and cooling plate.
gies, the time required for the cabin to reach the target temperature of
Mass of a single module (kg) 29.1 20 ◦ C is similar, as shown in Fig. 26. However, when the MPC strategy is
2
Surface area (m ) 0.38 adopted, the average cabin temperature is higher in the heating process
Heat conduction area (mm2) 84,000 and better thermal comfort is obtained, as shown in Fig. 26(a). Fig. 26
Heat conduction distance (mm) 105 (Identification) (b) shows the control error of cabin temperature. After the battery
Hydraulic diameter (mm) 8
Cross-sectional area (mm2) 64 × 35
temperature rises to 0 ◦ C, the MPC controller tends to use lower heating
Length (mm) 370 power to achieve better economy but leads to low coolant temperature.
Convective heat exchange area (mm2) 12000 × 35 At 3500 s, along with the cooling load brought by the high vehicle speed,
the low-temperature coolant leads to the insufficient capacity of the
cabin temperature regulation, and the cabin temperature drops to
slightly better than that of strategy 2, which improves the battery effi­
19.6 ◦ C. Overall, after reaching the target temperature, the cabin has
ciency and lifetime during the heating process.
been kept in the range of 20 ± 0.5 ◦ C, meeting the demand for thermal
3) Cabin heating.
comfort.
The cabin adopts a PID controller to realize temperature control, and
4) Energy consumption.
it has a higher priority in TMS. The heat transfer under the current
Fig. 27 shows the power and energy consumption of the PTC heater
control step is input to the MPC controller as a disturbance to optimize
under 4 WLTCs. The powers and energy consumptions of strategy 1 and
the PTC heating power. When the battery and cabin temperatures are
strategy 2 are similar. After the battery reaches the target temperature,
extremely low, the control error is large, and the MPC controller tends to
the three-way valve switches to the temperature-retaining circuit,
increase the heating power. As shown in Fig. 25, the MPC controller
without heat exchange through the heat exchanger. This causes the PTC
tends to make the PTC heater reach a higher temperature at the initial
temperature to increase and the heating power to decrease. In strategy 2,

20
R. Guo et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 228 (2023) 120502

Fig. A6. Comparison between 3-D model and 1-D model. (a) Battery temperature, (b) Coolant inlet temperature.

Fig. B1. The test bench.

the battery reaches the target temperature before strategy 1, so the
heating power experiences several fluctuations after 3925 s. Before the
battery reaches the target temperature, EDS heat recovery causes the
temperature of the battery circuit to be higher than that of strategy 1,
which reduces the heat exchange between the battery circuit and the
PTC circuit, resulting in a higher temperature of the PTC circuit, and
then the heating power of strategy 2 is slightly smaller than that of
strategy 1. For the above reasons, the energy consumption of strategy 2
is slightly lower than that of strategy 1. The battery heating rate of
strategy 2 is much higher than that of strategy 1, resulting in higher
battery efficiency. As shown in Table 7, although the energy consump­
tion of the PTC is reduced by only 89 Wh, strategy 2 saves 349 Wh
equivalent energy consumption compared to strategy 1 in terms of
termination SOC.
The weight of the optimization objective function of strategy 3 de­
termines the power preference of the PTC heater. Under low-
temperature conditions, the control error of battery temperature is
extremely large, and it tends to increase the heating power to get rid of
low-temperature as much as possible. When the control error is reduced,
the PTC heater tends to reduce energy consumption. The essence of the
MPC strategy to reduce energy consumption is to find the lowest power
in the prediction interval so that the battery temperature can be main­
tained near the target temperature. Lower PTC temperature, heating
core temperature, heat exchanger temperature, PTC, and battery coolant
temperature reduce energy loss in the heat transfer chain. As shown in
Table 7, during the heating process and 4 WLTCs, the PTC energy con­
sumption of strategy 3 decreased by 9.25 % and 20.95 % compared with
strategy 2, respectively. The termination SOC is increased from 33.461

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R. Guo et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 228 (2023) 120502

Fig. B2. Heat generation map for the EDS.

Fig. B3. The road test.

22
R. Guo et al.
Fig. B4. Comparison of road test and simulation results.
Fig. C1. The state space equation of the battery temperature control system.
% to 35.266 %. Overall, the total energy consumption for propulsion and
thermal management decreased by 2.84 %, which greatly improves the
economy of the vehicle in low-temperature conditions.
5) Effects of ambient temperature.
To verify the stability of the strategy, simulations are carried out
under various ambient temperatures. The ambient temperature and
initial temperature are set to 0 ◦ C, − 5 ◦ C, − 10 ◦ C, and − 15 ◦ C, respec­
tively. Fig. 28 shows the battery heating process at various ambient
temperatures. Under various ambient temperatures, the battery tem­
perature rises of strategy 2 and strategy 3 are significantly faster than
that of strategy 1. Compared with strategy 2 and strategy 3, the battery
temperature rise rate is highly similar.
Fig. 29 shows the cabin heating process at various ambient temper­
atures. As the ambient temperature rises, the time for the cabin to be
heated to the target temperature decreases. In strategy 1 and strategy 2,
the cabin temperature curves almost coincide. In strategy 3, the heating
speed of the cabin is slow in the initial stage and starts to accelerate in
the later stage. The reason can be analyzed by the heating power. Fig. 30
shows the PTC power and energy consumption at various ambient
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Applied Thermal Engineering 228 (2023) 120502
temperatures. In Strategy 3, PTC power rises at a maximum of 500 W⋅s− 1
due to the constraint of the change rate of heating power in the MPC
controller. The PTC power reaches its peak and then decreases. Lower
battery temperature leads to higher PTC heating power. Therefore, at
the end of the cabin heating process in Fig. 29, the lower the initial
ambient temperature, the faster the cabin heating rate. After the
completion of battery heating, the optimization objective of strategy 3 is
completely changed to the lowest energy consumption. Therefore, only
the minimum heating power required to maintain the current cabin and
battery temperature is provided, avoiding thermal energy loss.
Fig. 31 shows the total PTC energy consumption at various ambient
temperatures. With the decrease in ambient temperature, the energy
consumption of the three strategies is slowly increasing. Under various
ambient temperatures, strategy 3 can significantly reduce the PTC en­
ergy consumption. Fig. 32 shows the SOC at various ambient tempera­
tures. Affected by battery efficiency, lower ambient temperature leads to
a faster SOC reduction rate. With the application of strategy 3, the
decline rate of the SOC has been significantly alleviated.
R. Guo et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 228 (2023) 120502

Table C1 cost function of the battery will be introduced to study the influence
Definitions and values of the parameters in state space equation. of the active preheating strategy of the range extender on the economy
Classification and units Symbols Object Values of the vehicle under extremely low-temperature conditions. The energy
management strategy considering low temperatures will be developed
Specific heat capacity cptc PTC 880
(J⋅kg− 1◦ C− 1) cb Battery 1258 to further improve the vehicle economy.
cp Cooling plate 880
ch Heat exchanger 880 Declaration of Competing Interest
c Coolant 3300
Mass (kg) Mptc PTC 5
Mb Battery 232.8
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
Mp Cooling plate 0.8 interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
Mh Heat exchanger 2.7 the work reported in this paper.
ML Coolant in PTC circuit 2.89
MLB Coolant in battery circuit 8.35
Data availability
(Parallel)
15.77
(Series) No data was used for the research described in the article.
Temperature (◦ C) Tptc PTC –
Tb Battery –
Acknowledgments
Tp Cooling plate –
Th Heat exchanger –
Tptc_in Coolant in PTC circuit – This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation
Tcp_in Coolant in battery circuit – of China (No. 52172373). Thanks are due to GETEC Vehicle Technology
Heat power (W) Qptc PTC Control (Suzhou) Co., Ltd for assistance with the experiments.
Qgen Battery heat generation Map
Qfree Battery natural Estimated
convection Appendix A
Qcab Cabin heat exchange Estimated
Qeds EDS heat generation Map Bernardi model [27] is adopted to estimate the cell heat generation
Mass flow rate (kg⋅s− 1) ṁ Coolant in PTC circuit Time-
rate, as presented in Eq. (6). The ohmic resistance and polarization
varying
ṁb Coolant in battery circuit Time-
resistance are mainly related to SOC and cell temperature, and the en­
varying tropy coefficient is determined by SOC. To improve the estimation ac­
Thermal resistance Rb Inside the battery 0.005 curacy, we set the cell temperature range from − 30 ◦ C to 50 ◦ C, and the
(◦ C⋅W− 1) Rptc PTC - coolant Time- SOC range from 0.1 to 0.9. Fig. A1 shows the hardware setup for the
varying
resistance and the entropy coefficient measurement test. It consists of a
Rp Cooling plate - coolant Time-
varying battery charge–discharge tester, a multi-channel temperature monitor,
Rh Heat exchanger - PTC Time- and a temperature and humidity chamber. Four K-type thermocouples
circuit varying are attached to the cell surface to measure the cell temperature.
Rm Heat exchanger - battery Time- HPPC method [31] was applied to determine the internal resistance
circuit varying
of the cell at different temperatures and SOCs. Fig. A2(a) shows the
internal resistance test result. The entropy coefficient was obtained by
5. Conclusion potentiometric method [32]. The open-circuit voltages of the cell at
− 20 ◦ C and 40 ◦ C were measured under equally spaced SOC. Fig. A2(b)
An integrated thermal management system with waste heat recovery shows the calculation result of the average entropy coefficient in the
for cabin thermal comfort and battery heating was investigated in this temperature range from − 20 ◦ C to 40 ◦ C.
study. Working modes and switching rules were designed for various From Eq. (6), and Fig. A2, the heat generation rates of each discrete
driving modes and heating demands. Moreover, a control-oriented in­ SOC were calculated. Through the cubic spline interpolation method,
tegrated system model was established for pure-electric mode. A control the time-varying heat sources under different discharge rates were ob­
method for heating power based on model predictive control was pro­ tained. The temperature rise processes during discharging were simu­
posed, and the strategy was verified by the co-simulation of Simulink lated in STAR-CCM +. Fig. A3 shows the temperature field inside the
and AMEsim. The main conclusions are summarized as follows: cell. Fig. A4 shows the comparison between the simulated and tested
(1) In range-extended mode, compared with the independent ther­ surface temperatures. At the discharge rate of 0.5C, the test and simu­
mal management strategy, the integrated thermal management strategy lation values of the cell termination temperature are 34.625 ◦ C and
shortens the battery heating time by 39.1 %, saving 2.04 kWh of elec­ 35.135 ◦ C, respectively, and the relative error is 1.5 %. At the discharge
tricity for heating, and the cabin temperature is not obviously affected; rate of 1.0C, the test and simulation values of the cell termination
(2) In pure-electric mode, compared with the independent thermal temperature are 49.2 ◦ C and 50.635 ◦ C, respectively, and the relative
management strategy, the on–off strategy with electric drive system heat error is 2.9 %.
recovery shortens the heating time by 39.8 %, reducing the heating Computational fluid mechanics is adopted to calculate the temper­
energy consumption by 2.56 %. ature field of a module with a liquid cooling plate. Relevant fluid gov­
(3) In pure-electric mode, compared with the on–off strategy, the erning equations and calculation methods can be referred to in reference
model predictive control strategy reduces the heating energy con­ [33]. Fig. A5 shows the temperature field of the module. At the
sumption by 20.95 %, and the total energy consumption for propulsion discharge rate of 0.5C and 1.0C, the maximum temperature difference is
and thermal management decreased by 2.84 %, however, at the cost of 0.25 ◦ C and 0.86 ◦ C when the flow rate is 0.05 kg⋅s− 1, respectively.
larger cabin temperature fluctuations. Therefore, it is reasonable to treat a module as a thermal particle.
(4) The proposed model predictive control strategy maintains good The battery pack includes eight modules. Each module is regarded as
robustness. It still maintains good energy-saving effects at various a thermal particle, and a one-dimensional thermal model is established
ambient temperatures. in AMEsim. The modeling method can refer to the help document of
Future work will focus on the combination of energy management AMEsim. The main thermal model parameters of the module and cooling
strategies and thermal management strategies. The low-temperature plate are shown in Table A1. The 1D and 3D calculation results of the
module temperature and the coolant temperature are shown in Fig. A6.

24
R. Guo et al.
The maximum errors of the module temperature and the coolant tem­
perature are 2.0 % and 1.2 %, respectively, indicating that the calcula­
tion results of the 1D model are close to those of the 3D model. Thus, the
accuracy of the 1D model is guaranteed.
Appendix B
The heat generation models of the motor, the MCU, the generator,
and the GCU are based on the test data. The test principle is based on Eq.
(11). At a certain operating point, when the EDS temperature does not
rise and remains constant, the system approximately reaches thermal
equilibrium. The heat generation rate of the EDS is equal to the heat
dissipation rate, which is calculated by the temperature difference be­
tween the inlet and outlet and the flow rate. The bench adopted is shown
in Fig. B1. The operating point is set in CANape and continued until
thermal equilibrium, after which the operating point is adjusted to
continue the next test. The experiment tested 48 operating points and
calculated the heat generation rates. Further, the heat generation map of
the system is obtained by the interpolation method, as shown in Fig. B2.
The EDS thermal management model is established in AMEsim, and
the parameters are identified according to the experimental temperature
trajectory. The thermal management model was verified based on a
vehicle road test. The vehicle and test road are shown in Fig. B3. A
section of the elevated road in Suzhou was chosen as the test site. The
test lasted for half an hour. During the test, the fan was always on and
the pump speed was maintained at 3000r/min. The ambient tempera­
ture was recorded before the test. CANape was adopted to record the
vehicle speed, the motor torque, the motor speed, the EDS temperature,
and other parameters. The collected signals and initial conditions were
input into the AMEsim model and the temperature response was
recorded. The experimental and simulation results obtained are shown
in Fig. B.4. It can be seen that the established EDS thermal management
model can effectively reflect the temperature variation trend of the EDS.
Appendix C
The state space equation of the battery temperature control system is
shown in Fig. C1. Table C1 describes the meanings and values of the
parameters.
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