ADIABATIC FLOW SIMULATION IN AN AIR-CONDITIONED VEHICLE PASSENGER COMPARTMENT

Dispersion and flow of air in passenger compartments of vehicles are important to assure a comfortable environment for passengers, driver concentration and safe driving conditions. The article describe numerical adiabatic flow simulations for "mute", an electric car. Air streams in its passenger compartment were simulated; air velocities were compared while using different turbulence models. The turbulence models were selected upon being screened for best-suiting characteristics. The eddy-viscosity standard, RNG k-epsilon and SST k-omega models were used. Near-wall approaches (standard wall functions, scalable wall functions and enhanced wall treatment) were checked against a test case from "European Research Community on Flow, Turbulence and Combustion" to determine the best choice for "mute" passenger compartment air velocity simulations.