CFD simulation of a cabin thermal environment with and without human body – thermal comfort evaluation

Abstract

Nowadays, thermal comfort became one of the criteria in choosing a vehicle. In last decades time spent by people in vehicles had risen substantially. During each trip, thermal comfort must to be ensured for a good psychological and physical state of the passengers. Also, a comfortable environment leads to a higher power concentration of the driver thereby to a safe trip for vehicle occupants and for all traffic participants. The present study numerically investigated the effect of human body sited in the driver's place, over the air velocity distribution and over the thermal comfort in a passenger compartment. CFD simulations were made with different angles of the left inlet grill, in both cases, with and without driver presence. In majority of the actual vehicles environment studies, are made without consideration of human body geometry, in this case, the results precision can be affected. The results show that the presence of human body, lead to global changing of the whole flow pattern inside the vehicular cabin. Also, the locations of the maximum velocities are changing with the angle of the guiding vanes. The thermal comfort PMV/PPD indexes were calculated for each case. The presence of human body leads to a more comfortable environment.