Thermal management of highly efficient electric vehicles is extremely important for delivering uncompromised performance and human comfort whilst reducing the energy consumption for delivering these attributes, especially in cold and hot climates. 

The fluid network of such highly complex & integrated systems are managed via cooling system plants, refrigeration system plants, air handing unit plants and front-end airflow system plants in a very complex network. The control system for these networks also needs to be highly intelligent and coherent endeavour enabling a multi-layered MIMO system with several optimisation problems needing to be resolved in tandem. Such super systems present huge challenges for control, calibration and diagnostics resulting in hours of intensive and expensive protype vehicle testing, notwithstanding the extremely long time-to-market and prolonged testing for fault diagnosis to enable robust delivery. 

This paper introduces a novel approach of a highly integrated hardware-in-loop rig which combines the entire thermofluid super system – under – test (SUT) of the vehicle. The faster than real time digital twin approach enables eliminating all propulsion systems with thermal emulators designed to replicate the heating & cooling into the thermal system plant. Multiple distributed controllers are also integrated part of this rig, within the scope of the SUT. A novel approach of digital twin for front end is also introduced in this complex thermo-fluid rig and the results discussed within this paper. This rig enables sign off entire thermofluid system hardware & its associated control systems with time to test reduced by up to 94%.