Aircraft Passenger Cabin ECS-Generated Ventilation Velocity and Mass Transport CFD Simulation: Velocity Field Validation

Abstract

A collaborative research project, established between the University of Tennessee (UT) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) Lab and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI), sought to validate CFD prediction of the environmental control system (ECS)-generated ventilation velocity vector flow field of a wide-body aircraft passenger cabin. Measurements generating the experimental database of the time-dependent, three-dimensional velocity vector field were conducted in the CAMI Aircraft Environmental Research Facility (AERF) and in an identical wide-body aircraft in cruise flight at altitude. The CFD simulations were conducted on the CFD Lab resident PC cluster using both commercial and proprietary CFD computer codes. The results of this velocity field validation study reported herein quantitatively assess CFD algorithm/code strengths and weaknesses, and fully confirm the dominance of unsteadiness in the aircraft ventilation velocity field. To be reported in a separate paper are the results of an add-on FAA Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) project, which generated a mass transport validation component for a gaseous release into this ECS-generated velocity field.