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Numerical Simulation of Air and Heat Flow in a Heater Unit
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English
Abstract
Heat flow phenomena in the heater unit of an automobile air conditioning system have been analyzed by direct simulation, solving the Navier-Stokes' equation in which an upwind finite difference method of third-order accuracy is adopted with a 2-D model. The analytical results presented visually to ascertain air and heat flows in the heater unit. In addition, a comparative experiment was carried out to compare test results with calculated results.
The heater unit in the air conditioning system controls the temperature of air in the automobile. The heater unit consists of a unit inlet, outlet, mixing door and heater, as shown in Fig. 1 (1).
Air, entering the heater unit inlet is mixed with warm air heated by the heater to a suitable temperature, and then blown out of the outlet.
The shape and size of the heater unit are restricted by the size of an automobile's engine compartment and the layout of other auxiliary devices. Therefore, warm air must be mixed with cool air efficiently in this limited space. The shape of the heater unit has been determined based on experience. The development of the heater unit requires a fairly long period of time and much labor.
To improve the efficiency of this development process, the authors quantitatively analyzed air mixing phenomena in the heater unit. The Navier-Stokes' equation was solved directly by the third-order accuracy upwind method.
Authors
Citation
Ikuta, S., Tanaka, K., and Kato, K., "Numerical Simulation of Air and Heat Flow in a Heater Unit," SAE Technical Paper 890574, 1989, https://doi.org/10.4271/890574.Also In
References
- Kondo F. Aoki Y. Method of Predicting the Effect of the Thermal Performance of Heat Exchanger due to Non-uniform Air Flow Distribution SAE PAPER No. 850041
- Himeno R. et al Numerical analysis of The Flows Around A Heated Cylinder and A Single Row of Heated Cylinders 2nd NST Symposium Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo
- Tanaka K. et al Numerical analysis of The Flows Around A Heated Cylinder and A Single Row of Heated Cylinders 7 26 J. of the Flow Visualization Society of Japan
- Kawamura T. et al Direct Simulation of a turbulent inner Flow by the finite difference method AIAA-85-6376 1985