Evaluation of infrared heating as an adjunct to achieve occupant thermal comfort in cars

  • David John Collins

Student thesis: Master's ThesisMaster of Science by Research

Abstract

A vehicle heater requires about 20 times the amount of energy to heat up a car cabin when compared to heating up an identically sized room in a house (Matsunaga et al, 2010). In electric vehicles (EV's), when the heater system is operating the cruising range is reduced to around only a third (Nakane et al, 2010) or half (Bäuml et al, 2014) of that without heating. This is a major reduction in driving range and highlights the need to develop a more energy efficient way to heat a car. By introducing an alternative heating method, and therefore decreasing the energy requirement of the heater in the car, improvements in fuel economy could be made that would enable an increased distance per unit volume of fuel. This would reduce the fossil fuel emissions per vehicle and so would increase the marketability of electric and hybrid vehicles.
Date of Award2016
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • Coventry University
SponsorsJaguar Land Rover
SupervisorDoug Thake (Supervisor)

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