Abstract
Thermal transient response of internal combustion engines (ICEs) can enormously be improved by maintaining desired temperatures of coolant circulating in engine cooling system. Thus, fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions can be significantly reduced. Computer controlled servo actuators are the main components of advanced automotive thermal management systems. It is evident that desired thermal conditions can be achieved when all electrically controlled actuators function in harmony. In this paper, various control techniques are proposed for implementation on hydraulic actuated automotive cooling systems where they were never found in the literature implemented on such systems. A neural network optimal control (NNOC) and a sliding mode control (SMC) are designed and introduced to examine transient temperature tracking while minimize the smart components' power consumption of thermal management system. Representative numerical simulations are introduced to demonstrate the functionality of the proposed control schemes in accurately tracking prescribed temperature profiles.