• 한국자동차공학회논문집
• /
• 제10권4호
• /
• pp.223-233
• /
• 2002

The air distribution duct with multiple outlets is an essential part of automotive air-conditioning system In a bus. The estimation of airflow rate in an automotive air-conditioning duct is typically very complicate due to large variations in cross-sectional area and abrupt changes in flow direction, as well as unbalanced distribution of the flow. In this paper, the flow characteristic in a duct with multiple outlets is investigated through experiment, CFD simulation and a one-dimensional simulation. Numerical simulations have been performed for two simplified air conditioning ducts with multiple outlets used in a medium bus. The three dimensional Navier-Stokes code was used to evaluate the overall pressure, velocity Held, and distribution rate at each diffuser according to the change of various design parameters such as ratio of cross-sectional area and radius of bifurcated region. In addition, a one-dimensional program based on Bernoulli equation was developed to obtain optimized diffuser area required to equalize discharge flow rate at each outlet. As a result of this study, optimized diffuser area of design variable by one-dimensional program was very reasonable as compared to the trend deduced from CFD Simulation. Therefore, the simple and convenient one-dimensional analysis developed in this study can be applied in practical design procedure for air-conditioning duct.

• 한국자동차공학회논문집
• /
• 제10권5호
• /
• pp.98-106
• /
• 2002

The airflow characteristics of an air-conditioning duct with multiple diffusers were investigated through one-dimensional analysis, CFD simulation and experimental measurement. One-dimensional program based on Bernoulli's equation and minor loss equations was developed in order to evaluate the air distribution rate at each diffuser. In CFD simulation, three-dimensional flow characteristics inside air-conditioning duct were computed for incompressible viscous flow, adopting the RNG k-$\xi$turbulence model. Also, in an effort to equalize the discharge flow rate at each outlet, the optimization procedure has been performed to obtain the optimum diffuser area. In this process, square of difference between maximum discharge rate and minimum discharge rate is used as an object function. Diffuser area and discharge velocity are established as constraints. After optimization process, determined design variables are applied again in CFD simulation and experiment to validate the optimized result by one-dimensional program. Comparison with the experimental data of airflow rate distribution showed that the developed program seems to be acceptable and can be useful design tool for an automotive air-conditioning duct in an initial design stage.

• 한국철도학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 한국철도학회 1999년도 추계학술대회 논문집
• /
• pp.479-486
• /
• 1999

The noises generated from the air-conditioning duct are known to strongly affect the indoor-noises of high speed trains. The acoustic characteristics of an air-conditioning duct should depend on the geometry and shape of the duct. The structural material for Korean high speed train is supposed to be changed from Steel, which was used for TGV, to Aluminum in order to reduce the total train weight. Accordingly, the shape and layout of the air-conditioning duct of Korean high speed train will be different from that of TGV. Thus, this paper introduces a analytical method to predict the noise attenuation through the air-conditioning duct, based on the ISO 7235. In this method, the whole duct is divided into several pieces and the noise attenuations predicted for each duct piece are integrated to get the noise attenuation for the whole duct system. The validity of the method introduced herein is discussed through some numerical tests.

• 한국분무공학회지
• /
• 제1권3호
• /
• pp.37-50
• /
• 1996

Computational fluid dynamics was used to optimize an A/C duct. Three dimensional flow analysis in an automotive A/C duct was performed computationally using various turbulence models and compared numerical predictions such as outlet flow split, surface pressure distribution along the duct to experimental data. Additionally, we studied the effect of location variation of 2nd branch on exit flow ratio and could find optimal location of 2nd branch. The design of an A/C duct was modeled and calculated to enhance the airflow distribution in each outlet using the STAR-CD computational fluid dynamics software. In results, modified $k-\varepsilon$ turbulence model allows a successful prediction of static pressure distribution particulary at around strong curvature but little improvement flow split. In the future, adoption of CFD to design an A/C duct with modified $k-\varepsilon$ model will bring benefits of producing more accurate prediction, and also give designers more detail information much more than now.