Thermal Comfort Prediction and Validation in a Realistic Vehicle Thermal Environment

Kuo-huey Chen, Shailendra Kaushik and Taeyoung Han

General Motors Company

2012-01-0645
Published 04/16/2012

Debashis Ghosh and Mingyu Wang

Delphi Automotive Systems
Copyright 2012 SAE International doi:10.4271/2012-01-0645

ABSTRACT
The focus of this study is to validate the predictive capability of a recently developed physiology based thermal comfort modeling tool in a realistic thermal environment of a vehicle passenger compartment. Human subject test data for thermal sensation and comfort was obtained in a climatic wind tunnel for a cross-over vehicle in a relatively warm thermal environment including solar load. A CFD/thermal model that simulates the vehicle operating conditions in the tunnel, is used to provide the necessary inputs required by the standalone thermal comfort tool. Comparison of the local and the overall thermal sensation and comfort levels between the human subject test and the tool's predictions shows a reasonably good agreement. The next step is to use this modeling technique in designing and developing energyefficient HVAC systems without compromising thermal comfort of the vehicle occupants.

fuel consumption of a conventional gas-fueled car by approximately 35% and significantly higher for hybrids. This translates to a reduction of fuel economy from approximately 22 mpg and 18 mpg to 17mpg and 15mpg for a typical sedan and a light-duty truck, respectively. Given this backdrop, Energy Efficient HVAC Systems is getting significant attention from the automotive industry to improve fuel economy of their vehicles, and to conform to tighter CAF standards. As is widely recognized in the automotive industry, energy efficiency of HVAC systems can be improved using the following three techniques: (a) optimization of the existing conventional HVAC system (b) use of advanced window glazing for reduced passenger cabin soak temperatures [2] and (c) localized (micro) cooling/ heating strategies. Since December 2009, General Motors (GM) has teamed up with Delphi Thermal System (Delphi) and the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) to work on a DOE sponsored project to develop localized spot cooling/heating strategy with thermal electric devices (TED) to improve the HVAC energy efficiency. The key idea behind this technique is to deliver a relatively smaller amount of localized AC air directly to the thermally sensitive body parts of the occupant with reduced main HVAC loads for cooling and heating while maintaining occupant's thermal comfort. This concept has been evaluated in the wind tunnel to determine the effectiveness of various localized spot cooling/heating strategies in different vehicle thermal environments with solar loads. A typical crossover vehicle (crossover) was chosen for the project and has been equipped with external air delivering system that can provide a wide range of air flows and discharge temperatures to the desired nozzle locations

1. INTRODUCTION
A recent comprehensive study of fuel consumption for vehicle air-conditioning (AC) on a state-by-state basis using thermal comfort based approach by Johnson [1] shows that US uses an estimated 7 billion gallons of gasoline every year for air conditioning vehicles. This is equivalent to 6% of domestic petroleum consumption, or 10% of US imported crude oil. The study further shows that vehicle air conditioning loads are the most significant auxiliary loads and outweighs even other significant loads such as rolling resistance, aerodynamic drag or driveline losses. The fuel economy of a vehicle drops substantially when the AC compressor load is added to the engine. The AC increases the

Figure 1. Thermal sensation and comfort scale for test and analytical comparison. around the occupant. The tunnel test data for the vehicle include objective thermal manikin response and subjective human subject evaluation and scoring of the thermal comfort and sensation indexes for both the individual and combination nozzle arrangement [3]. As noted in our previous study [4], a validated thermal comfort analytical tool was developed to predict thermal comfort and the sensation for some spot cooling configurations tested in the thermal chamber at UCB. This VTCE (Virtual Thermal Comfort Engineering) tool relies on CFD for cabin flow and temperature, on human physiology model for thermoregulation and on thermal sensation/comfort perception model to assess the relative merits of various localized cooling strategies on thermal comfort, relatively rapidly and inexpensively. The conclusion in [4] indicates that the VTCE can predict for the comfort and sensation indexes in the mildly warm UCB test environment reasonably well. However, in the real vehicle environment, subject to significant solar load, the non-uniform and asymmetric thermal environment may induce much warmer local conditions. This in turn may trigger significant sweating to provide evaporative cooling to maintain thermal homeostasis. The sweat model in the VTCE tool had not been tested and validated under warmer thermal conditions in the past and this newly available test would provide an opportunity to test its efficacy under warmer conditions. This report is organized as follows: in section 2 a brief overview of the tunnel test conditions for thermal comfort validation is laid out and in section 3, the thermal comfort prediction tool and procedure is presented and finally in section 4, the corresponding simulated results are discussed.

2. TUNNEL CONDITIONS FOR THERMAL COMFORT VALIDATION

The details of all the test cases in the wind tunnel are described in [3]. Human subject test was used to evaluate both thermal sensation and comfort based on a scale between 4 and +4 which is consistent with the thermal comfort model in GM's VTCE tool. Figure 1 shows this evaluation scale for both sensation and comfort. For the current study, the baseline case is used for the current VTCE tool validation. The baseline was used in the tunnel to establish a relatively warm thermal environment so that a series of spot cooling nozzle flows can be studied later for the individual and combination effectiveness. For the baseline case, only the main HVAC flow was used without local spot cooling flow. Figure 2 shows the retrofitted vehicle with TED simulator occupying most of the rear seat and the trunk space. The baseline condition is: Cabin EHT RH Wind speed Discharge air flow rate = 29 C = 55% = 30 mph = 95 CFM

Discharge air temperature = 17 C Solar load = 500 W/m2 directly overhead

Figure 2. Retrofitted crossover vehicle with TED simulation system hosted in the trunk.

Figure 3. Crossover vehicle CAD model and surface mesh with segmented manikin.

3. THERMAL COMFORT PREDICTION TOOL AND PROCEDURE 3.1. PASSENGER COMPARTMENT MODEL
The thermal comfort modeling process begins with identifying and obtaining all the interior surfaces comprising the passenger compartment, including seats and appropriately segmented manikins from the CAD system. In this study, the vehicle's passenger compartment was created as shown in Figure 3. The model has all the key design parameters for thermal comfort modeling, such as the A/C outlet locations and sizes windshield angle, body vent locations, and many other parameters which influence the performance of the HVAC system. The large box takes almost the rear seat and trunk space is to mimic the TED simulation system in the wind tunnel shown in Figure 3.

3.2. FLOW ANALYSIS IN FLUENT

The flow and temperature for the cabin were calculated in Fluent [5] with boundary conditions matching the wind

tunnel setup. The CFD calculations used 4.7 M tetrahedral elements to capture the geometric and the flow details of the passenger compartment. A realizable k- turbulent model with standard wall function was used. The S2S (surface-tosurface) model was used for radiation heat transfer. Mass flow rate and constant temperature conditions were used for all AC outlets and constant static pressure outlet condition was specified at the pressure relief valve (PRV) locations. Appropriate thermo-physical properties, such as thermal conductivity, specific heat and density, are imposed on each wall separately by way of assigning appropriate wall material. In addition, thermal radiation properties such as emissivity, reflectivity and transmissivity for each wall are prescribed. Since solar radiation plays a significant role in the overall heat balance inside the passenger compartment, it is important that the glazing surface properties are assigned with care. Finally, convective boundary condition on the outside of these walls, are prescribed as heat transfer coefficients and ambient air temperature, reflecting the speed of the vehicle. A converged steady-state flow solution in Fluent was used to provide the vehicle panel temperature on the entire model and the air velocity and temperature around the manikin (in this study, it was taken at 3 cm off the manikin surface). The temperature and air velocity data were

then transferred to a stand-alone tool for thermal sensation and comfort calculations. The stand-alone thermal comfort tool is to be described next.

3.3.1. Occupant Skin Temperatures under Various Environmental Temperatures

In the present simulations, we assumed that the occupant is sitting on a chair in an office like environment which is a homogenous surrounding thermal environment- also called an EHT (Equivalent Homogeneous Temperature). As shown in Figure 4, the local skin temperatures are sensitive to the environmental temperatures. The core body segments, such as head, chest, back, pelvis, and thigh show higher skin temperatures compared with the overall temperature - the whole body average skin temperature. On the other hand, the extremities of the body segments, such as, lower arms, hands, and feet indicate significantly lower skin temperatures at relatively cold environments in order to minimize the body heat loss to the surrounding. However, the skin temperatures of these extremities were predicted higher than the overall body skin temperatures to increase the body heat release under high thermal environments greater than 30C. At EHTs greater than 30 C, the skin temperatures of the main body segments such as, chest, back, and pelvis, are nearly flat due to the heat removal associated with the evaporative cooling due to sweating. Vasodilatation and sweating are the primary modes by which humans attempt to lose excess body heat. At these elevated environmental temperatures, the human body thermal regulation system triggers vasodilatation, a phenomena that aids in regulating the blood flow in the body to control the skin and core temperatures. This body control mechanism redirects blood into the superficial capillaries in the skin to increase the heat loss by convection and conduction.

3.3. OCCUPANT SKIN AND CORE TEMPERATURE

The thermal comfort prediction for the current study was conducted by a stand-alone VTCE tool developed by UCB which differs from our previous approach [4]. The physiology model in the VTCE tool uses 16 body segments. Each of these segments consists of four body layers (core, muscle, fat, and skin tissues) and a clothing layer. A blood pool node and a series of conductors provide for convective heat transfer between arterial blood and the tissue nodes as well as for the countercurrent heat exchange between the arteries and the veins. The human body thermal regulation is mainly achieved by regulating the blood flow, so a realistic blood flow model is important for any dynamic model of the human thermal comfort. The occupant body uses vasoconstriction and vasodilatation to regulate blood distribution in order to control the skin temperature through an increase or decrease of heat loss to the environment. Veins and arteries are paired, even down to very small vessels, and veins carry heat from the arteries back to the core. The details of this human physiology model are described in [6,7,8,9]. The model is able to predict both core and extremity skin temperatures with a reasonable accuracy under a range of environmental conditions. Detailed validations for transient conditions can be found in [10, 11]. In order to further enhance our confidence in the tool, and to understand the behavior of the local thermal comfort under various environmental temperatures (12 C to 34 C), the VTCE simulation tool was applied to predict the local body skin and core temperatures for 16 body segments. A standard 50 percentile male was used for the human physiology with a metabolic rate of 1.0 MET (1 MET= 1 kcal/kg/hr). A summer clothing ensemble with an overall insulation level of (Clo=0.6) was specified which, of course varies based on the body segment under consideration - short sleeve shirt, trousers, socks, shoes, etc. The human physiology varies significantly among individuals, and these differences can affect the perceptions of thermal comfort; e.g., higher metabolic rate or increased body fat can cause people to feel warmer. In almost any environment, the occupant body is in contact with solid surfaces and loses or gains heat via heat conduction. In the passenger compartment, the seat is in contact with a considerable fraction of the body and must be considered to accurately model the occupant. The current model includes a contact surface for each body segment. Each body segment includes the fractions of the exposed skin and clothed skin in contact with the surface.

3.3.2. Occupant Core Temperatures under Various Environmental Temperatures

Core temperature is the deep body segment temperatures in comparison to the skin temperatures. Particularly, the core temperature of the main body segments, such as head, chest, back, and pelvis is normally maintained within a narrow range as shown in Figure 5. Significant core temperature elevation or decrease for the main body parts poses danger to human life, especially if prolonged even for a brief period of time. However, the core temperatures of the extremities, such as, arms, hands, and feet may vary significantly, depending on the environmental temperatures. As shown in Figure 5, the core temperatures of the hands and feet may undergo significant decrease reduction due to vasoconstriction of the blood vessels. This reduces blood from losing heat to the surroundings and also prevents the core temperature from dropping further.

Figure 4. Local skin temperature predictions under various Equivalent Homogenous Temperatures.

3.3.3. Occupant Body Heat Loss under Various Environmental Temperatures

The body heat losses for each body segment are shown in Figure 6. The body heat loss for the extremities, such as hands and feet is relatively low at low environmental temperatures compared to the head heat loss. The heat loss from the head is much higher than the rest of the body segments. Typically, a brain produces a significant amount of heat due to high neuronal activity. Even the process of thought itself creates considerable heat in the brain. The head has a complex system of blood vessels, which keeps the brain from overheating by delivering blood to the thin skin on the head, which allows the heat to escape. As shown in Figure 6, the heat released from the head is significantly higher than the rest of the body segments in the cold environments. The hand and the feet are very effective in removing heat at high environmental temperatures. As shown in Figure 6, the heat release from hands and feet reaches a minimum around 22 - 23 C environmental temperatures. But it increases at higher environmental temperatures compared to the other body segments. Only the main body parts, such as chest, back, and pelvis increase the heat loss significantly at the high environmental temperatures above 26 C due to sweating. When the environmental temperatures are close to the core body temperature, sweating is the only physiological mechanism for humans to lose heat. Due to the significant heat loss by sweating for these body segments, as shown in Figure 4, the skin temperatures for the cheat, back, and pelvis are nearly flat even when the environmental temperature increases greater than 26 C. The current model includes

clothing nodes to model the heat capacitance and the resistance to the flow of both heat and moisture due to the clothing. Heat capacity of the clothing is important when considering the transient effects [12]. Moisture resistance is important to correctly model the evaporative heat loss from the body through clothing. Although, the VTCE tool accounts for all the possible mechanisms of heat transfer at the skin, an accurate and a dependable sweat sub-model is critical for reliable predictions of skin temperatures at EHTs above 26 C. Based on the environmental conditions and the current state of skin and core temperatures, the physiology model in the VTCE tool determines whether sweating is required in order to maintain the core temperature to within a narrow band of 1C around 37.5 C. If the answer is yes, then the model has to determine the amount of sweat and its appropriate distribution all over the body. Preliminary thermal sensation and comfort predictions from the tool, for the current vehicle passenger cabin, showed opposite trends when compared with test data for head, chest, back and pelvis. This was attributed to significantly higher evaporative cooling as a result of excessive sweating in these regions. The issue was identified to be with the sweat distribution model used in the tool; it assigned higher sweat fractions to these core body segments. This resulted in significantly cooler thermal sensations predicted on these body segments than was observed in the tests. The current sweat distribution used in the sub-model was therefore replaced with a more accurate distribution based on recent study [13] that gave a highly detailed and a comprehensive insight into the sweating phenomena under various environmental and metabolic conditions. This change brought the predicted thermal sensation and comfort levels closer to those observed in the test.

Figure 5. Local core temperature perditions under various Equivalent Homogenous Temperatures.

Figure 6. Local body heat loss under various Equivalent Homogenous Temperatures.

Figure 7. A flow chart to show models developed and their relationships

3.4. OCCUPANT THERMAL SENSATION AND THERMAL COMFORT

The human sense of thermal comfort is very complex, and involves both the physiological and the psychological states of a person under specific conditions. In uniform environments, sensation and comfort correlate well: a neutral sensation corresponds to the best comfort; warmer or cooler sensations correspond to reduced comfort. In non-uniform or transient environments, however, the relationship between sensation and comfort becomes more complex: for example, the same cool face sensation could be perceived as very pleasant if the whole-body is warm or uncomfortable if the whole-body is cold. In the past few years, UC Berkeley has been working on studies of local body part thermal comfort. They have carried out human subject tests, developed comfort predictive models, and have generated valuable knowledge regarding human responses to the local cooling/heating. The human subject test results and local comfort predictive models developed from those tests provide unique information for understanding the human responses and the prediction of their responses. In both uniform and non-uniform environments, different parts of the body feel warmth and cool at different levels. The differences obviously depend on many factors, such as how the body's thermoregulatory physiology responds to the body's overall thermal state, asymmetry in clothing insulation and the environment conditions around the body, the rate of change in the body's skin and core temperatures, and on the thermal sensitivity of the different parts involved. They (UC Berkeley) have proposed to develop a local sensation model of the form in Eq. (1). The local sensation model is a function of local skin and mean skin (or core) temperatures and their rates of change. The local- and mean-

skin temperatures represent the response to stable conditions, and the derivatives of skin temperature and core temperature represent response to transients. The local skin temperature represents the local skin thermal conditions. Mean skin temperature represents the whole-body thermal status in the static part of the model. There will be a distinct model for each body part, so that together they capture the asymmetrical features of the environments. Based on the local and overall whole body sensation and comfort votes of the human subject tests, they performed regression analyses to arrive at the overall sensation and comfort models as shown in Figure 7. The details of the UC Berkeley thermal sensation and the thermal comfort models can be found in [14,15,16,17,18,19].

(1)

Term i in the model ranges from 1 to 16, corresponding to the body parts: head, chest, back, pelvis, left and right upper arms, left and right lower arms, left and right hands, left and right thighs, left and right legs, left and right feet.

3.4.1. Occupant Thermal Sensation under Various Environmental Temperatures

The local thermal sensations of the 16 body segments at various environmental temperatures are also predicted and shown in Figure 8. Base on the UC Berkeley comfort model

Figure 8. Local Thermal Sensations under Various Equivalent Homogenous Temperatures. (1), the local thermal sensation is only a function of local skin and mean skin (or core) temperatures. The behaviors of the skin and the core temperatures for each body segments were explained in the previous sections 3.3.1 and 3.3.2. For the stable thermal conditions, the transient terms in Eq. (1), such as, the derivatives of skin temperature and core temperature become zero and only the local- and mean-skin temperatures represent the response to the thermal sensation under the stable conditions. At stable thermal conditions, the local thermal sensations of the most body segments correlate well with the environmental temperatures except the main body segments such as, chest, back, and pelvis. These body segments experience a relatively cool sensation when the environmental temperatures are greater than 26 C. The relatively cool thermal sensation for these body segments is due to relatively low skin temperatures (Figure 4) associated with the excessive body heat loss due to evaporative cooling on these body segments. As shown in Figure 8, the extremities such as hands and feet correlate very well with the overall thermal sensation. Also the head sensation follows very closely with the overall body sensation at higher thermal environments (EHT greater than 26 C). At low environmental temperatures, the head sensation predicts slightly warmer sensation than the overall body sensation. As shown in Figure 8, the body segments for the chest, back, pelvis, thigh, and upper arms, are less sensitive to the environmental temperatures due to the clothing. The body segments not covered with clothing, such as head, hands, and lower arms tend to show higher sensitivities with the environmental temperatures, as shown in Figure 8.

3.4.2. Occupant Thermal Comfort under Various Environmental Temperatures

Thermal comfort is affected by the body heat loss/gain and comfort is maintained when the heat generated by human metabolism is allowed to dissipate, thus maintaining thermal equilibrium with the surroundings. Figure 9 shows the local thermal comforts for each body segment under various environmental temperatures. The overall thermal comfort is just comfortable for the environmental temperatures between 23 C and 27 C. The head thermal comfort is just acceptable for the environmental temperatures between 19 C and 27 C. It is recognized that the head thermal comfort prefers relatively cooler environments, as the brain produces much more heat through the countless brain functions and needs to remove the heat generation within the head. At a higher thermal environments (EHT > 26 C), the head, hand, leg, and feet local comforts correlate well with the overall thermal comfort. At lower thermal environments, the extremities, such as hand and feet correlated closely with the overall thermal comfort. The body segments, head, thigh, and the leg, tend to show relatively higher thermal comfort state than the overall body comfort at lower environmental temperatures. During cold weather, layers of insulating

Figure 9. Local Thermal Comforts under Various Equivalent Homogenous Temperatures. clothing for these body segments can help keep warm and produce better thermal comfort. Again the body segments for the chest, back and pelvis predicted neutral or comfortable states at high environmental temperatures above 26 C, as these body segments predicted a relatively cool sensation previously shown in Figure 8. The relatively high thermal comfort for these body segments is due to relatively low skin temperatures (Figure 4) associated with excessive body heat loss due to evaporative cooling of these body segments. flow path lines emitting from the HVAC outlets. The flow discharge angles were aiming at the chest area of the manikin. The air temperature contours at the manikin surface are shown in Figure 12. Both hands and upper lower legs are showing higher temperature due to solar load. Comparing to the chest which receives most of the cooling air flow, head is showing higher temperature. The body temperature distribution is quite non-uniform, ranging from 24.1 C to 41.3 C. Due to lack of cooling air, the temperature at upper back is around 36 C. For thermal sensation and comfort calculations in the VTCE tool, the following Fluent results are needed and have to be extracted from the CFD solution: (1) air velocity surrounding the manikin, (2) air temperature surrounding the manikin, and (3) vehicle panel temperature. In this study, we created a surface at 3 cm off the manikin surface and obtained air velocity and temperature on this created surface by interpolation from the CFD results. The vehicle panel temperatures are directly obtained from the Fluent simulation. Figure 13 shows the vehicle panel temperature and Figure 9 shows the air velocity and temperature on this created surface respectively. In Figure 14, air velocity is about 1.0 m/s and higher at the left upper and lower arms at this created surface. Also due to the air discharge angle, the air velocity is between 0.5 and 0.8 m/s at the chest and abdomen area. The other body segments receive significantly less air flow.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 4.1. FLOW RESULTS

The baseline case as described before was used to establish a warm environment. This warm environment was established by a higher ACC set temperature and the solar load. The solar lamp was mounted directly on the ceiling of the tunnel and it projected into the cabin almost directly from the slanted front windshield and rear window and not much from the side windows since they are almost parallel to the solar load angle. Figure 10 shows the solar heat flux for the front portion of the cabin interior with manikins. As seen from Figure 10, the IP receives most of the solar load and so as the steer wheel, driver hands and upper portion of the lower left and right legs. Figure 11 shows the velocity vectors at the chest level plane (left) with temperature on the vehicle body panels and the

Figure 10. Solar heat flux contours in the font part of the cabin (left) and driver manikin (right).

Figure 11. Velocity vectors colored by temperature at the chest level plane (left) and flow path lines (right).

4.2. THERMAL COMFORT AND SENSATION RESULTS

The data from Figures 13 and 14 were imported into the VTCE tool for thermal sensation and comfort calculations. In addition to the CFD simulation data which provide the thermal environment for the manikin, other conditions such as manikin body build, MET, clothing level, seat contact and clothing contact are needed for the physiological model. The following parameters are used for the physiology model in the PC tool prediction:

The clothing contact and sweating distribution are the most sensitive parameters for the thermal sensation prediction. The clothing contact parameter represents the clothing resistance for sweat evaporation between the bare skin and the clothing with the value of 1.0 being for bare skin and 0 for no sweat evaporation. In the present study, we found that the contact parameter (the so-called Woodcock factor) = 0.25 gave satisfactory result for the thermal sensation prediction. Figure 15 shows the thermal sensation prediction. In the VTCE tool both the local thermal sensation from 16 body segments and overall sensation were produced. In the wind tunnel human subject test, the overall sensation and local sensation from head, chest, back, right hand, left and right thighs were evaluated from 6 human subjects and the averaging results are shown in Figure 10. As mentioned earlier, the baseline case was set up to create a warm environment. The human subject test results indicate that thermal sensations are all in the positive warm state. The predictions and the human subject test data agree very well for the local sensations within 0.4 index scale except for chest and right hand. The

Figure 12. Manikin surface air temperature: front (left) and back (right).

Figure 13. Vehicle panel temperature (C) from Fluent simulation. thermal sensation prediction for the chest does not show as warm as the test. The most representative overall sensation agrees well within 0.1 between prediction and test. The corresponding thermal comfort is shown in Figure 16. The overall comfort from the prediction shows a comfort index of 0.5 which closely mimics the test data of 0.63. They all indicate just uncomfortable in the 4 to +4 UCB scale shown in Figure 1. Similarly, predictions for the local comfort indexes match the same trends of the available six test data showing just uncomfortable. The prediction of local thermal comfort for the chest shows opposite sign against the test data. This is consistent with the sensation prediction for the same body part. It is noted that the discharge angle has a significant impact on the local air speed and temperature and thus, the local sensation index. It is suspected that the air discharge angle may not be in good match between the test and prediction. The mismatch in the chest prediction needs to be further investigated. Although with a few minor discrepancy, we are quite encouraged with the validation progress so far.

SUMMARY/CONCLUSIONS
In this report, we demonstrate that the VTCE (virtual thermal comfort engineering) tool developed by UC Berkeley can predict thermal sensation and comfort for the occupants of the crossover vehicle under a relatively warm thermal environment with solar load quite satisfactorily. It is evident from this work that inputs to the model should closely reflect the test conditions. The comparison for both the thermal sensation and comfort ratings at each body segment and the overall body correlate very well between the VTCE predictions and the test data. In general, the validation results are very encouraging while we found the discrepancies of the sensation and comfort for the chest still deserve further investigation. Also evaluation of the VTCE tool for different cooling/heating configurations has been planned and the results will be reported when they are available.

Figure 14. Air velocity (m/s) (left) and temperature (C) (right) on a created surface 3 cm off the manikin surface.

Figure 15. Thermal sensation prediction for the baseline case.

Figure 16. Thermal comfort prediction for the baseline case.

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CONTACT INFORMATION
Kuo-Huey Chen Staff Researcher, Global R&D Center, General Motors Company Phone #: (586) 651-3283 kuo-huey.chen@gm.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank and acknowledge the valuable support from Dr. Hui Zhang and Prof. Ed Arens of University of Berkeley and Jeff Bozeman of General Motors. This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy (National Nuclear Security Administration) under Award Number DE-EE0000014.

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