Coupling of Human Thermoregulation and URANS Computation for Investigation of Local Heat Transfer and Flow Structures in a Generic Car Cabin

Abstract

Commonly used flow regimes, e.g. defrost and panel mode, are compared regarding human skin temperature and local comfort in dependence of the inlet direction, temperature levels and position of the driver. To avoid the standard application of a constant heat flux of about 50W/m2 for consideration of realistic thermal boundary conditions of the human, the heat emission of the driver is introduced using active and passive thermoregulation with application of the well-known Fiala model. The heat transfer through the seat is calculated using CHT method by coupling three regions, human - seat - environment. Computations using large computational resources allow for exploration of different climate control strategies as they relate to local flow structures and skin temperatures on the human body in a detailed manner.