MACHINES
On pressure drop and airflow directivity ability of air vents on automobile cabinets
In this study, airflow directivity ability and pressure drop values of air vents where placed on the front console of automobile cabinet were investigated with computational fluid dynamics analysis. One of the aims of these studies is the airflow performance impact of design changes on air vents. Therefore, parametric studies were conducted with diffuser structures having 3, 4, 5 blades and 16mm, 20mm, 24mm blade width and 3mm, 4mm blade thickness. These variations were created to determine the effects of the number of blades, blade width and blade thickness on air flow and pressure drop performances of automobile diffusers. The impact of automobile diffusers on thermal comfort inside of the cabinet has been detected—correlations which give pressure drop and airflow angle were obtained according to analysis results. Thus, equations giving airflow direction angle and pressure drop within specific parameters were obtained without computational fluid dynamics analysis. In this way, a faster approach was provided to reach related performance values on automobile diffuser design.