US Patent 11548372 Method and system for vehicle cooling systems

Methods and system for operating a vehicle cooling system are described. In one example, the vehicle cooling system cools a heat generating device via a fan and pump. A speed of the fan is commanded by a feedback controller with possible neural network predictive control to track a variable temperature reference that is based on thermal load estimation. A disturbance observer may be applied to observe thermal load and an observer-based observer may be used to generate the temperature reference so that the power consumption of a fan is minimized.