Aircraft Personal Ventilation: A CFD Thermal Comfort Analysis

Nowadays, many different research efforts are being conducted to develop personal ventilation system for aircrafts. A numerical CFD study is presented as an example analysis, finding the relationship between the initial jet temperature and mass flow to the local thermal comfort on the head, chest and face. Typical regional airplane cabin geometry was used with two passengers seated. The passengers were modeled with numerical manikins with body and arms. The study first investigated whether the personal ventilation jet has influence on only one of the passengers or if it also affects the other. It was demonstrated that the proposed personal ventilation outlet can influence local thermal comfort with minimum influence on the adjacent passenger. The equivalent temperatures on the head, chest and face were calculated with different initial jet temperatures. It was shown that the three body parts present different dependence on the initial jet temperature due to the different distances of the personal ventilation outlet and varying cloth thermal resistances. Lower temperatures may cause higher discomfort than higher temperatures. It was determined that the respective comfort limits would be exceeded when jet inlet temperatures were below 19 ^oC or above 50 ^oC for an outlet mass flow of 0,0047 kg/s.