Experimental and numerical study of airflow distribution in an aircraft cabin mock-up with a gasper on

Abstract

Overhead gaspers are prevalently installed in aircraft cabins as a personalized ventilation system. The air distribution in cabins with gaspers on is crucial for creating a thermally comfortable and healthy cabin environment. However, very few studies have investigated the suitable turbulence model to simulation air distribution in cabins with gaspers turned on. This study first conducted experimental measurements of airflow distribution in a mock-up of half of a full-scale, one-row, single-aisle aircraft cabin with a gasper on. Particle image velocimetry was used to measure the complex airflow field above a human simulator. This investigation then used the measured data to evaluate the performance of computational fluid dynamics with the re-normalization group (RNG) k–ε model and the shear stress transport (SST) k–ω model. The results showed that the SST k–ω model was more accurate than the RNG k–ε model for predicting the airflow distribution in gasper-induced jet dominant region in an aircraft cabin.

Keywords:

• jet flow
• computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
• particle image velocimetry (PIV)
• Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS)
• enclosed environments

Additional information

Funding

The research presented in this paper was partially supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (the 973 Program) [grant number 2012CB720100].