Mixed Convection in a Full Scale Aircraft Cabin Mock-Up

Abstract

For the study of mixed convective airflows, a full scale double aisle aircraft cabin mock-up as been built at the German Aerospace Center in Göttingen. It is designed as a testing configuration with realistic boundary conditions for commercial CFD-codes as well as the DLR in house code THETA. The aim is reliable prediction of cabin air-flow by means of CFD under consideration of computational time. Special attention will be given to the proper prediction of the separation lines as well as the resulting temperature distribution, making necessary validation of the used turbulence and radiation models. In order to provide a comprehensive validation data base the flow in the mock-up was studied with Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV), infrared thermography, and field temperature measurements. The influence of buoyancy effects and the interaction of the incoming air jets on the flow field have been studied independently by switching from isothermal to cooling conditions and by systematical variation of the relative volume flow of the air inlets. Finally the impact of the resulting flow fields on the temperature distributions has been studied.