Title: Temperature field measurement of heated ventilation flow in a vehicle interior

Authors: Sang-Joon Lee, Jong-Hwan Yoon

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering and Advanced Fluids Engineering Research Centre, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, 790-784, Korea. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering and Advanced Fluids Engineering Research Centre, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, 790-784, Korea

Abstract: The non-isothermal ventilation flow in a 1/10 scale vehicle interior model during compartment heating has been investigated experimentally. Three different ventilation modes were used to study their effect on the temperature field variation at the same Reynolds number. Instantaneous temperature field variations were measured by using a true colour image processing system and TLC (Thermochromic Liquid Crystal) particles. The relationship between the hue values of TLC colour image and the real temperatures was derived in advance and used to obtain real temperature variations in the vehicle interior. The ventilation flow in the passenger compartment was also visualised using a pulsed laser light sheet. As a result, the temperature field measurement technique used in this study was revealed to be a useful and powerful tool for analysing this kind of unsteady ventilation flow problem. The panel-vent heating mode is more effective for uniform temperature distribution in the rear compartment than the foot-vent mode, and the thermal non-uniformity could be minimised by using the hybrid-vent mode in a short elapse time.

Keywords: colour image processing; passenger compartments; temperature field measurement; thermochromic liquid crystal; ventilation flow; vehicle interiors; modelling; panel-vent heating; foot-vent heating; vehicle design.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVD.1998.062105

International Journal of Vehicle Design, 1998 Vol.19 No.2, pp.228 - 243

Published online: 29 May 2014 *

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