Investigation on the Flow Characteristics inside an Automotive HVAC System with Varying Ventilation Mode

Abstract

The ventilation flow in a heating, ventilation and air conditioning HVAC module of a passenger car was investigated experimentally. Three different ventilation modes with varying temperature mode were tested to study the effect of ventilation mode on the velocity field inside the HVAC module. For each mode, more than 450 instantaneous velocity fields were measured using a particle image velocimetry (PIV) velocity field measurement technique. The instantaneous velocity fields were ensemble averaged to obtain the spatial distribution of mean velocity and spanwise vorticity. The present work highlights the usefulness of the PIV technique for the analysis of the flow inside an HVAC module. The experimental results can be used not only to understand and improve the ventilation flow of an HVAC module but also to validate numerical predictions.