Numerical Study to Improve the Flow Uniformity of Blow-Down HVAC Duct System for a Train

A HVAC(Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning) is adapted to increase the comfort of the cabin environment for train. The train HVAC duct system has very long duct and many outlets due to the shape of a train set. the duct cross section shape is limited by a roof structure and equipments. Therefore, the pressure distribution and flow uniformity is an important performance indicator for the duct system. In this study, the existing blow down type HVAC duct system for a train was supplemented to improve the flow uniformity by applying a design method combining design of experiment (DOE) with numerical analysis. The design variables and the test sets were selected and the performance for each test set was evaluated using CFD(Computational Fluid Dynamics). The influence of each design variable on the system performance was analysed based on the results of the performance evaluation on the test sets. Furthermore, the optimized model, whose the flow uniformity was improved was produced using the direct optimization(gradient-based method). Finally, the performance of the optimized model was evaluated using numerical analysis, and it was confirmed that its flow uniformity has indeed improved.