Air Ventilation and Thermal Comfort in a Tramcar

Abstract

In the present study, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) vents of a tramcar passenger cabin were designed by utilizing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. Three dimensional and transient numerical simulations were performed in order to obtain the flow and the temperature fields in the cabin. The time dependent Navier Stokes and energy equations for turbulent flow conditions were solved by a commercial CFD package (ANSYS Fluent). The obtained temperature distribution and the air circulation velocity in the cabin comply with the EN 14750-1 standard for both cooling and heating modes of the air conditioning unit. The proposed vent design provides an improved thermal comfort compared to the existing vent structure in the tramcar.