Method for operating a vehicle cooling system

Abstract

Method for operating a vehicle cooling system (10) comprising a first fan assembly (32) for generating a main cooling flow (28) acting on a first radiator arrangement (16) and a second fan assembly (42) adjacent to the main cooling flow (28) for generating a secondary cooling flow (48) acting on a second radiator arrangement (18), wherein the secondary cooling flow (48) is diverted from the main cooling flow (28) by means of the second fan assembly (42), and wherein the ambient air (54) drawn in for generating the cooling flows (28, 48) passes through a filter element (56) located upstream of the fan assemblies (32, 42) and the radiator arrangements (16, 18) for particle filtration.A control unit (68) compares an actual value (nist) of a sensor-determined and / or computationally determined rotational speed, which represents a rotational speed occurring at the second fan assembly (42) depending on the cooling demand, with a target value (nsoll) specified for a clean state of the filter element (56), whereby if the comparison result lies outside a specified rotational speed tolerance range (Δn), the control unit (68) generates a trigger signal to initiate a reversing operation of the first fan assembly (32) in order to blow out the filter element (56) by means of the first fan assembly (32) by reversing the direction of the main cooling flow (28).

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