Climate Control and HVAC Simulation For Occupied Spaces in Cars Using Open Source Software

Abstract

When designing passenger cars, HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning) plays an important role to the overall vehicle design process in order to satisfy thermal comfort criteria for occupants while reducing energy consumption required. In this context, a Ferrari car is analyzed with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods to improve the internal flow inside the cockpit.

In the work detailed here the toolbox for HVAC applications available in the open source CFD software HELYX was employed. The HVAC module exploits an improved internal radiation model, a solar radiation module, support for humidity modelling, functionality to assess human comfort by parameters like PMV, PPD, DR, etc.