Mechatronic and Instrumentation of Automotive Air Conditioning Test Rig

摘要

Air conditioning system has become a standard option on most vehicles for enhancing comfort and safety. Most of the automotive air-conditioning system; the compressor is a belt-driven coupled to the engine. In addition, automotive air conditioner is a complex system due to variation of the components in an automotive air conditioner. Based on the situation, the instrumented air conditioning test rig was built to obtaining higher precision and accuracy in the test about the air-conditioning system, including the vapor compression refrigeration cycle in the system and the function of each component in the system. There are four locations of temperature and pressure measurement was selected in order to develop the test rig. These locations are at the inlet and outlet of the compressor, the outlet of the condenser, and the inlet of the evaporator, respectively. Humidity and air temperature is also measured for both evaporator and condenser coil at the inlet and outlet of them. This study has provided an automated and instrumented test rig which is capable of performing different kinds of study on the automotive air-condition. All the parameters are measured during the cycle and were analyzed by using the properties of refrigerant-134a. The refrigerant mass flow rate was measured by the Mass flow meter. The cooling effect, work of compressor, electrical power consumption and the coefficient of performance of the air-conditioning system were investigated at a variable speed compressor.