Three-dimensional effects of an air curtain used to restrict cold room infiltration.pdf

Applied Mathematical Modelling 31 (2007) 1109–1123 /locate/apm Three-dimensional effects of an air curtain used to restrict cold room infiltration A.M. Foster a,*, M.J. Swain a, R. Barrett b, P. D’Agaro c, L.P. Ketteringham a, S.J. James a a FRPERC, University of Bristol, Churchill Building, Langford, Bristol BS40 5DU, UK b Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Bristol, Queens Building, University Walk, Bristol BS8 1TR, UK c Dipartimento di Energetica e Macchine, Universita degli Studi di Udine, via delle Scienze 208, I 33100 Udine, Italy Received 1 July 2005; received in revised form 1 December 2005; accepted 6 April 2006 Available online 16 June 2006 Abstract The aim of this study was to compare the measured effectiveness of an air curtain device at different jet velocities against a three-dimensional (3-D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. The air curtain device was not as wide as the entrance and had a geometry that encouraged 3-D flow. By carefully setting up the air curtain an effectiveness of 0.71 was achieved compared to the initial value of only 0.31 as set by the air curtain device installer. The 3-D CFD model pre- dicted the infiltration through the entrance with no air curtain to an accuracy of within 20–32%. The predicted effective- ness, E, of the air curtain at different jet velocities was 0.10–0.15 lower than measured. The shape of the effectiveness curve against jet velocity was well predicted. CFD has shown that the flow from this air curtain cannot be considered as 2-D. The central part of the je