Passenger comfort has become an increasingly important issue in the automotive industry. The high degree of competition between the various manufacturers has resulted in the incorporation of certain features in newer cars that are deemed highly desirable by the customer. A feature among these, still requiring improvement, is the thermal comfort of passengers in the compartment. Consequently, the automobile industry is striving for improved climatic conditions inside the vehicle to meet passenger demand for more comfortable trips. This need is critical not only to the comfort of passengers but more importantly to their safety. However, to make progress in this area, a good understanding of the flow behaviour within the vehicle is required. This is addressed in this paper, where the effort is focused on establishing a system by which the characteristics of the flow inside a one-fifth-scaled model of a passenger compartment are analysed experimentally and computationally. The aim of the present work is to assess the influence of the air discharged from both windshield defrosters/demisters and instrument panel (IP) registers on passenger comfort.
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