Simulation of bypass electric water pump to reduce the engine warm-up time

Abstract

There are several strategies have been developed in the automotive cooling system to improve engine thermal management. Basically, these designs use controllable actuators and mechatronic components such as electric water pump, controllable thermostat, and controllable electric fan to improve engine temperature control on most operating ranges. Most of the strategies are complicated and costly. This paper introduced a different approach to improve coolant temperature warm-up during cold start. The new strategy was by promoting a higher coolant flow rate inside the engine block by just installing an electric water pump in the bypass hose. The new approach’s cold start performance was studied using GT-SUITE on a transient model, complete with finite-element of engine block design, lubrication system, components friction model, engine with combustion model and vehicle system. The proposed strategy clearly showed faster coolant temperature increase (18 seconds faster compared to the conventional cooling system). The strategy not only increase the coolant temperature faster, but also increases the oil temperature faster, lower Friction Mean Effective Pressure (FMEP), and lower fuel consumption at certain condition during the warm-up period.