Effects of thermal radiation and insolation on passenger compartments of an automobile

We discuss the dynamical simulation model of the thermal environment for automobile passenger compartments which is useful for the development of automobile air-conditioning systems. In our previous research, we proposed the model of this type considering the accuracy and the amount of computation, however, proposed model was insufficient to simulate the effect of thermal radiation and insolation on the thermal environment of the automobile passenger compartment. In this paper, we focus on the emission and the insolation, and attempt to model their effects on the thermal environment of the automobile passenger compartments. For the emission analysis, we compute view factors using the 3D model of an automobile, and adopt Gebhart´s method to consider the absorption and the reflection of the thermal radiation at the inner surface of the automobile passenger compartment. While, for the insolation, we compute the spectral solar irradiance for a given operational condition (time and date, position, and attitude of the automobile) using solar geometry algorithm and solar spectral model (SPCTRAL2), and evaluate the effect of the insolation on the thermal environment of the automobile passenger compartment by Gebhart´s method.