• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.417-423
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• 2009

Air curtains are widely used for gates of shopping mall, warehouse, cold stores and refrigerated display cabinets. The purpose of the air curtain is to reduce the infiltration of outdoor air and heat loss from the air conditioning space to ambient air. Design data for the air curtain given by previous researchers do not mention the influence of wind speed. Thus, this paper presents a performance of single jet air curtain in heating space when the wind blows toward the opening space of the building. A numerical simulation is used to study the influence of various parameters on the efficiency of the downward-blowing air curtain device which is installed inside of the wall above the door. The performance of the air curtain is evaluated by sealing efficiency which provides the assessment of the energy savings. A new safety factor is also proposed for determination of air curtain jet velocity under the various wind conditions.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.24 no.11
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• pp.806-812
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• 2012

Air curtains are widely used in commercial and public buildings to replace solid doors where traffic of people is predicted. At doorways where the solid door is open continuously or intermittently, an air curtain may be installed in order to reduce the flow of heat and moisture from the enclosed space to the outside. The purpose of this paper is to predict isolation performance of the single-sided air curtain when the wind is blowing. For the study, a numerical simulation is used to find the influence of various jet velocities on the efficiency of the single-sided air curtain device which is mounted at the side of the doorway. The isolation performance of the single-sided air curtain is evaluated by sealing efficiency which provides the assessment of the infiltration air ratio. According to the result of this study, the single-sided air curtain has lower sealing efficiency than downward-blowing air curtain. Therefore, for energy conservation in heating space, the single-sided air curtain is not recommended because of its low effectiveness.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.39-45
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• 2016

The optimal design of an air curtain nozzle installed at exits, such as fire doors, was determined in order to block the flow of smoke into safe zones. Smoke is the greatest cause of loss of life during the fire. To block the flow of smoke, the airflow must be expelled uniformly without eccentricity from the slits in the air curtain nozzle installed on the upper part of the opening. In order to accomplish this, factors such as air inflow volume, shape of the internal slits, and thickness of the external slits were considered as variables in this study, and a numerical analysis was performed under various conditions. This led to the selection of a final shape which led to the finalization of a design shape. The final shape was manufactured as a prototype and the results were compared and verified with the results of the numerical analysis. The relative error of the numerical analysis results was less than 1%, and the average speed of all the slits was tested, exhibiting a highly consistent tendency.