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. 2020 Mar 26;13(3):665–675. doi: 10.1007/s12273-020-0609-2

A modified turbulence model for simulating airflow aircraft cabin environment with mixed convection

Yijia Zhao 1, Zhengxian Liu 1,2, Xiaojian Li 1, Ming Zhao 1,2, Yang Liu 1,2,✉
PMCID: PMC7100490  PMID: 32226591

Abstract

The forced convection (air supply jet) and the natural convection (thermal plume of passenger) co-exist in an aircraft cabin simultaneously. Due to the notable difference of the Reynolds numbers for the two convection processes, the traditional RANS method can hardly simulate the forced/natural convection flows accurately at the same time. In addition, the large geometric ratio between the main air supply inlet and the whole cabin leads to difficulties in grid generation for the cabin space. An efficient computational model based on the standard k-e model is established to solve these problems. The coefficients in the dissipative equation are modified to compensate the enlarged numerical dissipation caused by coarse grid; meanwhile, the piecewise-defined turbulent viscosity is introduced to combine the forced and natural convection. The modified model is validated by available experimental results in a Boeing 737-200 mock-up. Furthermore, the unsteady characteristic of the aircraft cabin environment is obtained and analyzed. According to the frequency analysis, it turns out that the thermal plume is the main factor of the unsteady fluctuation in cabin.

Electronic Supplementary Material (ESM)

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at 10.1007/s12273-020-0609-2.

Keywords: aircraft cabin environment, modified turbulence model, mixed convection flow, modified dissipation coefficients, piecewise-defined turbulent viscosity

Electronic Supplementary Material

12273_2020_609_MOESM1_ESM.pdf (1.3MB, pdf)

A modified turbulence model for simulating airflow aircraft cabin environment with mixed convection

Acknowledgements

The work described in this paper was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (“973” project of China) (No. 2012CB720101), grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11672206 and No. 11972250) and the Key Program of Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin City (No. 19JCZDJC32000).

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Supplementary Materials

12273_2020_609_MOESM1_ESM.pdf (1.3MB, pdf)

A modified turbulence model for simulating airflow aircraft cabin environment with mixed convection

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