Louvers are important components of air conditioning systems, in which they are primariliy used for directional air flow delivery. Hence, it is of interest to determine the downstream flow field of air passing through the louvers for analyzing air conditioning effectiveness in a confined space. A detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis can be done by resolving all the geometrical features of the louvers, however, this involves high computational effort, especially, in the case of physical movement of the louvers for time-varying directional delivery of the air. The central aim of this research is to develop a simplified rapid airflow model, which can replicate similar downstream flow while obviating the necessity to geometrically resolve the louver. In order to achieve this, a source term in the momentum equation (or a body force term) of appropriate magnitude is introduced in a particular region in the vicinity of the louver. The source term specification region was identified based on the louver dimensions as well as empirically using inputs from the geometrically resolved simulations. The model was calibrated for a particular louver angle and then tested for other angles. The primary flow variables used for comparing the rapid and the geometrically resolved model are: flow turning angle and the mass flow rates through different domain boundaries. The results from the rapid model are compared with the geometrically resolved model for different cases and good agreement is obtained. In terms of the cell count, a reduction of 50% is obtained, in the region encompassing the louver, using the rapid model as compared to the geometrically resolved model. The rapid model will prove to be even more advantageous for simulating transient flow in which a source term of varying magnitude can be easily included instead of using dynamic meshes for physically moving louvers. This provides scope and direction of further research.
Citation: 2017 Annual Conference, Long Beach, CA, Conference Papers
Product Details
- Published:
- 2017
- Number of Pages:
- 8
- Units of Measure:
- Dual
- File Size:
- 1 file , 1.2 MB
- Product Code(s):
- D-LB-17-C011
