Numerical Investigation on The Effect of Grille Blockage Ratio on Air Flow Characteristics of Air Vents

Samin Enam; Muhammad Noor Afiq Witri Muhammad; Nor Azwadi Che Sidik

doi:10.37934/cfdl.14.10.3241

Authors

Samin Enam School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia
Muhammad Noor Afiq Witri Muhammad School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia
Nor Azwadi Che Sidik Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology (MJIIT), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Jalan Sultan Yahya Petra, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 54100 Kuala Lumpur, Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37934/cfdl.14.10.3241

Keywords:

Louver, Air Vent, Blockage Ratio, CFD

Abstract

Vents with louvers are an important component in the indoor heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system in providing a degree of freedom to the occupants to direct the air flow and prevent foreign objects from entering or exiting the air ducts. As a result, whether designing air ventilation or any duct design that involves louvers, the influence of louver design cannot be ignored. For vent design, aside from louver angle, blockage ratio is an important factor in air distribution due to its effect on pressure drop and flow distribution to indoor space. The blockage ratio is often described as the ratio of the projected area of the structure in flow direction to the cross sectional area of the domain around the structure. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of varying blockage ratios on the air flow characteristics of air vents including velocity and pressure drop. The chosen air vent model for this study is the Proton Wira air vent. Results are obtained using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis and by utilizing the free and easily available open source software via Code-Saturne. The parameters were set according to available literature. The study finds that the pressure drop increases with the increasing blockage ratio. The velocity drops almost 7% for blockage ratio greater than 3 and the pressure drop increases more than 4%.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Muhammad Noor Afiq Witri Muhammad, School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia

afiqwitri@mail.fkm.utm.my

Nor Azwadi Che Sidik, Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology (MJIIT), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Jalan Sultan Yahya Petra, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 54100 Kuala Lumpur, Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

azwadi@utm.my

References

Kit, Jonathan Ho Siew, Chong Kok Hing, Basil T. Wong, Victor Bong Nee Shin, Lee Man Djun, and Christopher Jantai Anak Boniface. "Numerical Simulation of Alternative Smoke Control Approach in a High-Rise Building." Journal of Advanced Research in Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Sciences 80, no. 2 (2021): 1-12. https://doi.org/10.37934/arfmts.80.2.112

Yakubu, G. S., and S. Sharples. "Airflow through modulated louvre systems." Building Services Engineering Research and Technology 12, no. 4 (1991): 151-155. https://doi.org/10.1177/014362449101200405

Nakanishi, Toshikazu, Tamotsu Nakamura, Youichirou Watanabe, Katsumasa Handou, and Takahiro Kiwata. "Investigation of air flow passing through louvers." Komatsu Tech. Rep. 53 (2007): 1-9.

Ooi, Chinchun, Pao-Hsiung Chiu, Venugopalan Raghavan, Stephen Wan, and Hee Joo Poh. "Porous media representation of louvers in building simulations for natural ventilation." Journal of Building Performance Simulation 12, no. 4 (2019): 494-503. https://doi.org/10.1080/19401493.2018.1510544

Faghani, Ehsan, Reza Maddahian, Pedram Faghani, and Bijan Farhanieh. "Numerical investigation of turbulent free jet flows issuing from rectangular nozzles: the influence of small aspect ratio." Archive of applied mechanics 80, no. 7 (2010): 727-745. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00419-009-0340-z

Quinn, Willie R., and J. Militzer. "Experimental and numerical study of a turbulent free square jet." The Physics of fluids 31, no. 5 (1988): 1017-1025. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.867007

Berg, J. R., S. J. Ormiston, and H. M. Soliman. "Prediction of the flow structure in a turbulent rectangular free jet." International communications in heat and mass transfer 33, no. 5 (2006): 552-563. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icheatmasstransfer.2006.02.007

Yaacob, Mohd Rusdy, Rasmus Korslund Schlander, Preben Buchhave, and Clara M. Velte. "Experimental evaluation of kolmogorov’s-5/3 and 2/3 power laws in the developing turbulent round jet." Journal of Advanced Research in Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Sciences 45, no. 1 (2018): 14-21.

Archambeau, Frédéric, Namane Méchitoua, and Marc Sakiz. "Code Saturne: A finite volume code for the computation of turbulent incompressible flows-Industrial applications." International Journal on Finite Volumes 1, no. 1 (2004).

Bhandari, D., and S. Singh. "Analysis of fully developed turbulent flow in a pipe using computational fluid Dynamics." International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology 1, no. 5 (2012): 1-8.

Pairan, Mohamad Rasidi, Sharul Azmir Osman, Ahmad Nabil Md Nasir, Nur Hazirah Noh, Mohd Hizwan Mohd Hisham, Adjah Naqkiah Mazlan, Hanifah Jambari, and Muhamad Afzamiman Aripin. "The Blockage Ratio Effect to The Spray Performances." Journal of Advanced Research in Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Sciences 95, no. 1 (2022): 99-109. https://doi.org/10.37934/arfmts.95.1.99109

Medina, Ricardo, Ashkan Motamedi, Murat Okcay, B. Uygar Oztekin, Gustavo Borel Menezes, and Arturo J. Pacheco-Vega. "On the implementation of open source CFD system to flow visualization in fluid mechanics." In 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, pp. 25-995. 2012.

Sasongko, N., and M. Arif. "Open source computational fluid dynamic: challenges and its future." In Conference on Open Source, Jakarta, Indonesia. 2009.

Saleem, Arslan, and Man-Hoe Kim. "CFD analysis on the air-side thermal-hydraulic performance of multi-louvered fin heat exchangers at low Reynolds numbers." Energies 10, no. 6 (2017): 823. https://doi.org/10.3390/en10060823

Akamine, Yoshihiko, Takashi Kurabuchi, Masaaki Ohba, Tomoyuki Endo, and Motoyasu Kamata. "A CFD analysis of the air flow characteristics at an inflow opening." International Journal of Ventilation 2, no. 4 (2004): 431-437. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733315.2004.11683684

Qing, Nelvin Kaw Chee, Nor Afzanizam Samiran, and Razlin Abd Rashid. "CFD Simulation analysis of Sub-Component in Municipal Solid Waste Gasification using Plasma Downdraft Technique." Journal of Advanced Research in Numerical Heat Transfer 8, no. 1 (2022): 36-43.

Oberkampf, William L., and Timothy G. Trucano. "Verification and validation in computational fluid dynamics." Progress in aerospace sciences 38, no. 3 (2002): 209-272. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0376- 0421(02)00005-2

Gaioni, Valerio and Fernandez-Cosials, Mikel. (2020). "A Practical Verification and Validation Procedure for Computational Fluid Dynamics." (2020).

Shukla, M., and Lakshminarasimha, N. "CFD Analysis of Airflow inside a Car Compartment. " International Journal of Technical Innovation in Modern Engineering & Science 4, no. 6 (2018).

Rameshkumar, A., S. Jayabal, and P. Thirumal. "CFD analysis of air flow and temperature distribution in an air conditioned car." International Refereed Journal of Engineering and Science 2, no. 4 (2013): 1-6.