STUDIES OF THE THERMAL COMFORT INSIDE OF THE PASSENGER COMPARTMENT USING THE NUMERICAL SIMULATION

Abstract

The increasing market demand for highly effective and efficient HVAC systems for automotive applications has determined a great impulse in the research and development of innovative methods and instruments to predict passengers' thermal sensation. The interaction of convective, radiation and conduction heat exchange in a passenger's compartment is very complex. The varying radiation from the sun and the influence of inhomogeneous air temperature and air velocity from the vehicle's ventilation or air conditioning system creates a climate that may vary considerably in space and time. This paper shows the distribution of the temperature and the air flow fields of passengers' compartment starting from the body's energy balance based on Fiala's manikin (which provides all the thermo-physiological effects of the human body model) by THESEUS-FE software and the numerical simulation for air flow inside the car will be acomplished by Fluent software.