A Simulink Model for an Engine Cooling System and its Application for Fault Detection in Vehicles

Date

2015-07-23

Authors

Gupta, Rajat

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Abstract

An engine cooling system is an integral part of the vehicle responsible for maintaining the engine at an optimum operating temperature. A faulty component of the cooling system will lead to engine overheating that can damage the engine and also increase vehicle emissions. On-Board Diagnostic (OBD) system is deployed in vehicles that stores information about the detected malfunction as Diagnostic Trouble Codes (DTCs) so that a technician can identify the possible faults inside the vehicle. This project describes the development of a Simulink model for an engine cooling system and its application for fault detection in vehicles. Thermodynamics and physical laws are used to derive mathematical equations to represent an engine cooling system that is implemented in simulink. With specified input signals and engine cooling component data, the performance of the engine cooling system can be evaluated using the simulink model. A method for fault diagnosis of the engine cooling system is proposed. It is based on comparing the signals from a test vehicle to those generated by the simulink model. Appropriate diagnostic algorithm is written that compares data from a healthy and faulty system and indicates the presence of a faulty component if large deviations are found. Since data from a test vehicle was not available, the proposed method was tested using data generated by the developed simulink model using faulty component data. Results indicate that the proposed method has the potential to be used by car manufacturers to speed up fault detection and perform fault diagnosis without the use of expensive diagnostic tools.

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Keywords

Engine Cooling, Matlab, Simulink, Faults, Diagnosis, OBD, Vehicle

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