Patent Application
20180345751
The present disclosure relates to a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system, such as a vehicle HVAC system.
This section provides background information related to the present disclosure, which is not necessarily prior art.
Dual or integrated vehicle heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems (HVAC) include multiple blowers, typically a front blower for a front area of the passenger cabin and a rear blower for a rear area of the passenger cabin. Existing dual/integrated HVAC systems undesirably produce hiss and gurgle sounds, particularly when the front blower is on and the rear blower is off. This phenomena occurs primarily due to lack of sub-cooling and lower background noise in the passenger cabin as a result of the rear blower being deactivated. In addition, it will be more pronounced/amplified and become readily audible in EV, HEV, and gasoline vehicles equipped with idle stop/start technology. The present teachings advantageously provide for an improved dual/integrated vehicle HVAC system with suppressed audibility of evaporator hiss/gurgle.
This section provides a general summary of the disclosure, and is not a comprehensive disclosure of its full scope or all of its features.
The present teachings provide for a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system including front and rear blowers. The front blower blows air through a front evaporator to a front area of a passenger cabin. The rear blower blows air through the front evaporator in an integrated HVAC system or through a rear evaporator, and to a rear area of the passenger cabin. The rear blower is configured to be always active when the front blower and air conditioning is active.
Further areas of applicability will become apparent from the description provided herein. The description and specific examples in this summary are intended for purposes of illustration only and are not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure.
The drawings described herein are for illustrative purposes only of select embodiments and not all possible implementations, and are not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure.
Corresponding reference numerals indicate corresponding parts throughout the several views of the drawings.
Example embodiments will now be described more fully with reference to the accompanying drawings.
With initial reference to
The HVAC system 10 generally includes a front blower 12 and a rear blower 14. The front blower 12 can be any suitable airflow generating device configured to direct airflow to a front area of a vehicle passenger cabin. The rear blower 14 can be any suitable device for generating and directing airflow to a rear area of the vehicle passenger cabin.
The HVAC system 10 further includes an evaporator 20. The front blower 12 and the rear blower 14 are both arranged to direct airflow through the evaporator 20 in the integrated HVAC example illustrated in
The HVAC system 10 further includes a control module 40. In this application, including the definitions below, the term “control module” may be replaced with the term “circuit.” “Control module” may refer to, be part of, or include processor hardware (shared, dedicated, or group) that executes code and memory hardware (shared, dedicated, or group) that stores code executed by the processor hardware. The code is configured to provide the features of the control module and systems described herein. The term memory hardware is a subset of the term computer-readable medium. The term computer-readable medium, as used herein, does not encompass transitory electrical or electromagnetic signals propagating through a medium (such as on a carrier wave). The term computer-readable medium is therefore considered tangible and non-transitory. Non-limiting examples of a non-transitory computer-readable medium are nonvolatile memory devices (such as a flash memory device, an erasable programmable read-only memory device, or a mask read-only memory device), volatile memory devices (such as a static random access memory device or a dynamic random access memory device), magnetic storage media (such as an analog or digital magnetic tape or a hard disk drive), and optical storage media (such as a CD, a DVD, or a Blu-ray Disc).
The control module 40 controls activation, deactivation, and speed of the front blower 12 and the rear blower 14. The control module 40 can also control activation and deactivation of the evaporator 20 and the heater core 22. The control module 40 activates the rear blower 14 when the front blower 12 and the evaporator 20 are active. Thus, the rear blower 14 will always be active when the front blower 12 and the evaporator 20 are active. The rear blower 14 can be operated at any suitable speed, such as at least a low speed. For example, when a user requests activation of the front blower 12 and the evaporator 20 to cool the front area of the vehicle passenger cabin, such as by entering a command using any suitable user interface (e.g., an electronic interface such as an instrument panel touch screen, or a mechanical interface such as a switch or knob) the control module 40 will sense such activation and automatically activate the rear blower 14 at least at a low speed. In this manner, the control module 40 advantageously ensures that the rear blower 14 is always in operation when the front blower 12 is activated with air conditioning on.
The dual HVAC system of
The control module 40 is configured to activate the rear blower 14 in a manner described above, so that whenever the front blower 12 is in operation with the air conditioning on, the rear blower 14 will also be in operation at any suitable low blower speed, such as at the lowest blower speed. Thus, the control module 40 activates the rear blower 14 whenever the front blower 12 is activated. As a result, the rear blower 14 advantageously suppresses the audibility of the hiss/gurgle generated by the front and/or rear evaporators 20 and 70 due to optimized sub-cooling and slightly increased background noise due to both the blowers 12 and 14 operating simultaneously. As a result, occupants of the passenger cabin 52 will not be subject to any undesirable hiss/gurgle noises produced by the front and/or rear evaporators 20 and 70.
The foregoing description of the embodiments has been provided for purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the disclosure. Individual elements or features of a particular embodiment are generally not limited to that particular embodiment, but, where applicable, are interchangeable and can be used in a selected embodiment, even if not specifically shown or described. The same may also be varied in many ways. Such variations are not to be regarded as a departure from the disclosure, and all such modifications are intended to be included within the scope of the disclosure.
Example embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough, and will fully convey the scope to those who are skilled in the art. Numerous specific details are set forth such as examples of specific components, devices, and methods, to provide a thorough understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that specific details need not be employed, that example embodiments may be embodied in many different forms and that neither should be construed to limit the scope of the disclosure. In some example embodiments, well-known processes, well-known device structures, and well-known technologies are not described in detail.
The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular example embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting. As used herein, the singular forms “a,” “an,” and “the” may be intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. The terms “comprises,” “comprising,” “including,” and “having,” are inclusive and therefore specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groups thereof. The method steps, processes, and operations described herein are not to be construed as necessarily requiring their performance in the particular order discussed or illustrated, unless specifically identified as an order of performance. It is also to be understood that additional or alternative steps may be employed.
When an element or layer is referred to as being “on,” “engaged to,” “connected to,” or “coupled to” another element or layer, it may be directly on, engaged, connected or coupled to the other element or layer, or intervening elements or layers may be present. In contrast, when an element is referred to as being “directly on,” “directly engaged to,” “directly connected to,” or “directly coupled to” another element or layer, there may be no intervening elements or layers present. Other words used to describe the relationship between elements should be interpreted in a like fashion (e.g., “between” versus “directly between,” “adjacent” versus “directly adjacent,” etc.). As used herein, the term “and/or” includes any and all combinations of one or more of the associated listed items.
Although the terms first, second, third, etc. may be used herein to describe various elements, components, regions, layers and/or sections, these elements, components, regions, layers and/or sections should not be limited by these terms. These terms may be only used to distinguish one element, component, region, layer or section from another region, layer or section. Terms such as “first,” “second,” and other numerical terms when used herein do not imply a sequence or order unless clearly indicated by the context. Thus, a first element, component, region, layer or section discussed below could be termed a second element, component, region, layer or section without departing from the teachings of the example embodiments.
Spatially relative terms, such as “inner,” “outer,” “beneath,” “below,” “lower,” “above,” “upper,” and the like, may be used herein for ease of description to describe one element or feature's relationship to another element(s) or feature(s) as illustrated in the figures. Spatially relative terms may be intended to encompass different orientations of the device in use or operation in addition to the orientation depicted in the figures. For example, if the device in the figures is turned over, elements described as “below” or “beneath” other elements or features would then be oriented “above” the other elements or features. Thus, the example term “below” can encompass both an orientation of above and below. The device may be otherwise oriented (rotated 90 degrees or at other orientations) and the spatially relative descriptors used herein interpreted accordingly.
