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Vehicle thermal management covers the engineering field of solutions that maintain the complete vehicle in acceptable operating conditions regarding component and fluid temperatures in an engine. The maximum efficiency rating of a Diesel engine reaches up to 45%. In order to improve the fuel efficiency of the vehicle one can reduce the losses generated by the cooling system. Ideally, the full motive force of the engine should be used for propulsion and new and more efficient energy sources have to be explored to power the secondary systems (cooling, compressed air…). This paper introduces a dynamic programming algorithm which is used to determine the maximum gains during operation for a given architecture of the cooling system of a Heavy Duty Truck. The algorithm, based in Bellman principle, will determine the best control trajectory for the pump and the fan according to energetic and control goals (fuel economy, regulation of temperature…).

Fuel cell vehicles, (FCV) are characterized by the utilization on the same electric bus of an hydrogen fuel cell (FC) as a primary energy source and of storage elements like batteries as a secondary source. In our project, the fuel cell is a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM), which is well adapted for transport field applications. A Lithium rechargeable battery, more specifically a LiFePO4, is used to supplement the FC over the driving cycle. According to the requirements of the drive cycle of the vehicle, a 30 kW PEM FC system and a 4.5 kWh LiFePO4 battery is considered here. To define the power supplied by each source an energy management system is used.