Numerical and Experimental Investigation on the Performance of a Thermoelectric Cooling Automotive Seat

作者：Su, Chuqi; Dong, Wenbin; Deng, Yadong; Wang, Yiping; Liu, Xun^*

来源：Journal of Electronic Materials, 2018, 47(6): 3218-3229.

DOI：10.1007/s11664-017-5960-4

• Thermoelectric cooling automotive seats
• thermoelectric cooler
• thermal comfort

Heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) is the most significant auxiliary load in vehicles and largely increases extra emissions. Therefore, thermoelectric cooling automotive seat, a relatively new technology, is used in an attempt to reduce HVAC consumption and improve thermal comfort. In this study, three design schemes of the thermoelectric cooler (TEC) are proposed. Then the numerical simulation is used to analyze their heat transfer performance, and evaluate the improvement of the seat cooling in terms of the occupant back thermal comfort. Moreover, an experiment is conducted to validate the accuracy of the simulation results. The experimental results show that: (1) an average reduction in air temperature of 4 degrees C in 60 s is obtained; (2) the temperature of the occupant's back drops from 33.5 degrees C to 25.7 degrees C in cooperation with the HVAC system; (3) back thermal comfort is greatly improved. As expected, the thermoelectric cooling automotive seat is able to provide an improvement in the occupant's thermal comfort at a reduced energy consumption rate, which makes it promising for vehicular application.

• 出版日期2018-6
• 单位武汉理工大学