State observer design for microchannel cooling system using extended Kalman filter

Abstract

In this study, lumped physical models are developed for microchannel cooling systems, based on which extended Kalman filters are designed to estimate system states. Experimental validations indicate that the state estimate inaccuracies are within 3% under various operating conditions. Artificial white noise is added to system measurements to investigate the filtering effect of the extended Kalman filter, the fluctuation of temperature can be reduced by 50%. The filter is applied to a system with two microchannel heat exchangers experiencing unsynchronized heat loads. Numerical and experimental results prove that the application of an estimator is beneficial for improving thermal management efficiency by tracking the system states which are hard or impossible to be measured directly.

Keywords:

• Dual heat exchangers
• extended Kalman filter
• microchannel cooling
• state observer

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This article is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (52006100), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20190469), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (30919011285), and the Young Teacher Development Fund (AQ08998) from School of Energy and Power Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology.