Numerical analysis of a commercial display cabinet

Air curtains are especially used in stores and retailer supermarkets as barrier systems to seperate inner and outer spaces from each other. For both air quality and energy saving, it is crucial that the air transfer between these two spaces are at minimum. Minimization of air transfer between inner and outer spaces, not only decreases heat transfer but also stabilizes the humidity balance. In this project, numerical analysis of a commercial display cabinet has been carried out. For this purpose PHOENICS, a computational fluid dynamics code, is utilized. In the first part of the study, necessary literature review related to display cabinets, computational fluid dynamics and PHOENICS was made. In the second part, the required programme for a commercial display cabinet with one jet, known boundary conditions and physical characteristics is written. Graphs of vector and temperature distributions are taken from Photon. The results of the numerical analysis and the experiments are compared with each other and the conformity degree between these two results is determined. Afterwards, in the re-model for two and three jets situations on the existent cabinet based on refrigeration power, optimum jet system physical conditions for each of the three systems has been modified according to temperature change and velocity values of the air, and comparisons among them have been made. The results indicate that, the results the both CFD analysis and experiments are almost equal and for refrigeration systems with three jets, more refrigeration power is required to obtain the necessary temperature values to keep products fresh in display cabinets. But they are also the most ideal systems especially because they can distribute temperature in a homogeneous way, meaning that the temperature value is the same at every point in the cabinet with three jets.