Experimental and numerical study of the air distribution inside a car cabin

¹ CAMBI Research Center, Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest, 021414 Bucharest, Romania
² IUT Rennes, Laboratoire Génie Civil Génie Mécanique 35704 Rennes Cedex 7 France
³ Technical University of Cluj Napoca, Department of Mechanical Engineering 400020 Cluj - Napoca, Romania

^* Corresponding author: ilinca.nastase@gmail.com

Abstract

The main declared goal of all car manufacturers is to ensure high comfort inside the cabin and to reduce the fossil fuel. It is well-known that the time spent by the people indoor has raised in the last decade. The distance between the home and the workplace increased due to diversity of activities and hence job diversity. The thermal comfort during the travel must to be ensured to reduce the occupant’s thermal stress. The present study is investigating a comparison between the measured data and the numerical simulation results in the case when the ventilation system is functioning. It was evaluated the effect of the boundary conditions air flow and air velocity distribution in a passenger compartment in two cases: first is the general used constant inlet flow and the second is a new approach of importing the measured data obtained during the experimental measurement session as a boundary condition.CFD simulations were made taking as input the measured data obtained during experimental session. We have observed differences between initial simulation results and the measured data, therefore, for more accurate results, a new approach is needed, to impose as boundary conditions the measured data.