Parametric Study of Negatively-Buoyant Wall Jets and Air Curtains

Kalluri, R.R.; Loth, E.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/12173 Copy

Description

Title

Parametric Study of Negatively-Buoyant Wall Jets and Air Curtains

Author(s)

• Kalluri, R.R.
• Loth, E.

Issue Date

2003-08

Keyword(s)

refrigerated air-curtain entrainment

Abstract

This objective of this work was an extensive study of the parameters that affect ambient entrainment in refrigerated air curtains used in medium temperature vertical multi-deck display cases. The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of the air-curtain physics and entrainment through a systematic parametric study. Experiments were conducted using flow visualization, cinematic Particle Image Velocimetry and thermo-couple measurements at various locations in the flow cycle. These techniques were used to investigate various effects including variations in: air jet width, velocity profile of the jet, velocity of the jet, temperature difference between the air curtain and to the ambient air and geometry of the display case (e.g. fully-stocked configuration with backflow perforations vs. an idealized wall jet). Thermal entrainment and velocity distributions were obtained for several test conditions to understand these effects. The air curtain was found to be highly turbulent at the inlet. Hence, the observed air curtain dynamics were found to be largely different from previous wall-jet experiments and simulations which employed laminar inflow conditions. The results indicated that the entrained mass flow rate was found to reduce nearly linearly with decreasing Reynolds number (jet velocity), but the effect of product heat flux would need to be taken into account before lower velocity levels can be recommended. In addition, the air curtain entrainment was found to reduce when decreasing the air curtain width and/or using a stepped profile instead of a uniform profile. However, increasing the Richardson number tended to increase mixing which somewhat unexpected since negative-buoyancy effects were thought to act as a stabilizer. As such, the increased mixing was attributed to modifications in the downstream velocity profile shape, where decreased jet temperatures led to increasing necking effects, which subsequently increased the velocity gradients and thus led to more mixing of the air curtain. With respect to geometry, the fully stocked configuration with perforations open was found to give the minimum entrainment of all configurations studied, even less than that from the solid-wall configuration.

Publisher

Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center. College of Engineering. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Series/Report Name or Number

Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center TR-217

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/12173

Sponsor(s)/Grant Number(s)

Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Project 136

Owning Collections