Numerical Study of the Airflow Distribution in a Passenger Car Cabin Validated with PIV

Abstract

This study is intending to improve the virtual development of the largest secondary consumer in an electrical vehicle, the HVAC system. This was achieved by validating a numerical model which calculates the jet flow distributions at the air vents of the front seats in a full-scale car cabin. The velocity fields were examined under consideration of three different volume flow rates of the air conditioning unit. For the validation, the optical measurement technique Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) was used. The numerical car cabin model embedded the same spatial geometry as the experimental setup. The Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes computations were combined with the shear stress transport k-ω turbulence model and discretized on a hybrid mesh. A computation of the flow transition from the channel to the jet stream and the development of the jet flow in the car cabin was accomplished. The deviations between the experimental and numerical results of the mean air velocity amounted to less than ∼12% for each measuring plane. Additionally, the results show that this statement is valid for the different inlet volume flow settings.