Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling and Experimental Validation of the Thermofluidic Performance of Climatic Chambers

Abstract

Climatic chambers are of great importance in research and development to conduct tests of components in closed environmentally controlled conditions. The growing demand from the industry to fulfill stricter international standards creates the necessity to ensure that the thermofluidic behavior of climatic chambers guarantees high-quality consistency in their interior domain. At present, scientific research on climatic chambers available in the literature is scarce and is mostly based on lumped modeling, hence not addressing the heterogeneities that arise in the interior of the chamber. In this work, an in-depth 3D model of the velocity and temperature fields that develops in the interior of climatic chambers was developed in computer fluid dynamics (CFD) and validated with the experimental data from a new prototype. The key objective of this research was to establish a validated framework for model-based design optimization of climatic chambers. The proposed model showed good agreement with the experimental data with a difference of 0.6 m/s and 9.65 °C in the velocity and temperature fields, respectively, thus validating its applicability to perform model-based design optimization of climatic chambers.

Evaluation of the Thermofluidic Performance of Climatic Chambers: Numerical and Experimental Studies

“…The air properties, including the density, dynamic viscosity, thermal conductivity, and specific heat, were assumed to vary with the temperature and were obtained from [11], based on interpolated data from Keenan [25] and Touloukian [26], and can be expressed as follows:…”

“…It provides a 3-D thermofluidic CFD model to analyse the fluid flow, heat, and mass transfer behaviour of a new climatic chamber prototype designed by the industrial company Aralab, with the collaboration of the Itecons research centre. This model is based on a 300 L inner volume chamber that was numerically and experimentally studied by Silva et al [11].…”

“…Figure11. Measured (a) temperatures; (b) relative humidity inside the climatic chamber (SP-temperature: set point temperature; SP-relative humidity: set point relative humidity; TavgBottom: average temperature, bottom section of inside chamber; RHavgBottom: average relative humidity, bottom section of inside chamber; TavgMiddle: average temperature, middle section of inside chamber; RHavgMiddle: average relative humidity, middle section of inside chamber; TavgTop: average temperature, top section of inside chamber; RHavgBottom: average relative humidity, top section of inside chamber).…”