Studies of air-flow and temperature fields inside a passenger compartment for improving thermal comfort and saving energy. Part I: Test/numerical model and validation

It is important to analyze the temperature and air-flow field inside the passenger compartment to ameliorate the amenity and decrease energy consumption. This paper uses commercial software FLUENT to simulate 3-D temperature distributions and flow field in a compartment with or without passengers. Validated by the experimental data, the numerical model is used to investigate the influence of different factors on the thermal comfort and the energy consumption. In the first paper, the test conditions and the numerical models are described in details. The measured and predicted transient temperatures are compared and good agreement is obtained. In addition, the air temperature distribution in a steady test situation is also numerically predicted by both transient and steady model, and the agreements between the three sets of data are satisfactorily, showing the reliability of the models. In the companion part of the two papers the simulated effects of several operational conditions will be presented. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.