Study of Passenger Comfort in Vehicle Cabin

Abstract

Thermal Comfort in Passenger Vehicle is of major concern for car manufacturers and customers. One of the defining factors of thermal comfort is air velocity. Conventional fan used in vehicle for circulation of conditioned air does not provide desired air velocity to rear passengers. Fan at its highest speed does produce a lot of noise inside the vehicle cabin which hampers noise comfort as well. Thermal and Noise comfort are two vital factors contributing a safe drive. The main objective of this work is to improve thermal comfort for rear passengers inside the vehicle cabin and by doing so improving noise comfort level as well. In the present work, low noise axial fans are embedded in headrest whose direction can be controlled independently by rear passengers. Modelling of car seat and fan assembly is done and computer simulated results are used to validate the experimental results.