Improvement of Correlative Approaches for Mixed Convective Flow Through a Horizontal Vent

This study deals with the mixed convection flow through a shallow horizontal vent linking two compartments (one over the other). Depending on the temperature difference of gas as well as the ventilation flow rate between the two compartments, the flow through the vent can be bi- or uni-directional. A literature survey highlights that three correlations are used in safety engineering to calculate these upward and downward mixed convection flow rates. Unfortunately, for the same conditions, these correlations give very different results and, to date, there is no common agreement in the scientific community to identify quantitatively the most accurate model. This study proposes a new assessment of these correlations based on new experimental data obtained from the laboratory facility as well from the industrial apparatus. In addition, an improvement of the best model is proposed which better reproduced the experimental results.

CFD ANALYSIS OF FLOW THROUGH HORIZONTAL CEILING OPENING DUE TO BUOYANCY AND PRESSURE DIFFERENCE

The buoyancy driven exchange flow through the large openings in horizontal partitions occurs in many practical situations such as in enclosed regions with a ceiling opening and a heat source such as fire. The density difference between two compartments arises partly due to difference in composition and partly from the difference in temperature. A heavier fluid located on the top of a lighter fluid and separated by a horizontal vent constitutes a gravitationally unstable system. Horizontal vents produce flow, which are unstable with irregular oscillatory behavior. However, when lower compartment is slightly pressurized the flow becomes stable and unidirectional. A numerical study has been performed to characterize the bi-directional flow and transition to unidirectional flow through a horizontal vent in an enclosure, due to differences in pressure and density across the vent. Fresh and salt water has been considered as working fluids to create density difference across the vent with a pressure field imposed in the lower compartment. The pressure in the lower region was increased to find the critical pressure corresponding to transition to unidirectional from bi-directional flow. Unsteady, 2D axisymmetric, incompressible Navier–Stokes equation along with species, turbulence and continuity equation have been solved with finite volume method using the in-house computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. Several cases were examined to compute the critical pressure for various density differences for low opening aspect ratio. The code has been validated with reported experiments and used to simulate various other practical cases occurred during fire induced flow through such openings.