| This dissertation describes a specific research project using particle imaging velocimetry (PIV) technique to measure the airflow field surrounding a human body seated in an aircraft cabin and using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method to simulate the airflow.; A heated manikin was used to simulate the physical and thermal presence of a human body seated in the aircraft cabin. Nine planes of image data were acquired in the aircraft cabin near the manikin; six of them were oriented vertically and three were oriented horizontally. The measurement planes were composed of individual sections measuring 2 x 2 ft. Each section was designed to overlap 2.4 in. with all adjacent sections to ensure data continuity. The nine planes were composed of different number of sections due to the limitation of the seating area. Image data were processed and presented in both vector and turbulence intensity plots. The experimental results indicated that the presence of manikin resulted in complex flow patterns around the manikin, and the seating arrangement also had a large influence on the flow pattern, along with the joints of the linear diffuser sections.; The CFD work was carried out by constructing and meshing the aircraft cabin geometry with Gambit 1.3 and numerically calculating with FLUENT 5.5. The geometry was constructed by replicating the real configuration presented in the experiment, including the entire sections of overhead diffuser slots, the seated thermal manikin, the heaters distribution, the seating arrangement and the openings on the return ducts. The simulation provided complete information for the aircraft cabin, especially the detailed velocity, temperature and turbulence intensity distribution around the manikin and the diffuser slots, which could not be obtained by PIV due to the geometry limitation and reflection influence. The simulations also indicated that the velocity was not symmetrical along the centerline of the diffuser, nor uniform at the outlets of the diffuser slots.; Comparisons of the CFD and PIV results indicated that the magnitudes along with the directions are not exactly consistent, their distributions and trends are pretty close to each other, especially in order of magnitude. |
