Body force model for simulating airflow through dynamically oscillating louvers

Abstract

Louvers are primarily used for directional airflow delivery in air conditioning systems. To model the airflow passing through a louver, a detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis can be performed by resolving all the geometrical features of the louver (we call this the Geometrically Resolved [GR] model). However, in the case of physical movement of louvers dynamic meshing is required, leading to high computational effort. In this paper, we propose a simple airflow model with a body force in the louver region (we call this the Body Force [BF] model), which can replicate similar downstream flow while obviating the necessity to resolve the louver geometry. In order to achieve this, a body force term of appropriate magnitude is introduced in a particular region in the vicinity of louver. The BF term specification region was identified based on the louver dimensions and using inputs from the GR model simulations. The time-dependent physical movement of louvers was achieved by specifying a time-varying body force term. The results obtained from the BF model and the GR model were in good agreement. This suggests that a simple BF model is an useful alternative to the GR model to simulate airflow through louvers.