Numerical and experimental study of airflow in a typical refrigerated truck configuration loaded with pallets

This work is part of a research activity aiming to improve and to optimize air-distribution systems in refrigerated vehicles in order to decrease the temperature differences within the load. The present study reports on the numerical and experimental characterization of airflow generated within a semi-trailer enclosure loaded with pallets. In the studied configuration, inlet and outlet sections were placed in the front of the trailer. This is a very common configuration and is extensively used in refrigerated transport. The experiments were carried out on a reduced-scale model built with a ratio 1/3.3 of a trailer. The numerical modeling of airflow was performed using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code Fluent and two levels or turbulence modeling: the standard k-epsilon model and a model with a second-moment closure, the Reynolds stress model (RSM). Only the results obtained using the RSM model showed agreement with the experimental data. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.