Air Curtain Design Optimization of Refrigerated Vertical Display Cabinet using CFD

This paper presents computational investigations to address some of the design parameters that have significant effects on the performance of the refrigerated display cabinets. These parameters include air curtain velocity, width, discharge angle and positioning of the air curtain outlet from the front edge of the top shelf, also the effect of using a honeycomb on the flow path at the air curtain outlet. A 3D CFD model was constructed to assess the effect of the side flow on the performance of the vertical display cabinet. The suitability of using 2D CFD to carry out the display cabinet design optimisation was also considered. Experimental work was then carried out to validate the numerical work: there was good agreement between the data generated from the numerical work with the experimental results. It was determined that for the length of the cabinet considered in this investigation, the flow can be assumed to be two-dimensional, for most of the cabinet length. The results also indicate that optimum air curtain mass flow rate should account for nearly a third of the total air mass flow rate inside the display cabinet.