Flow and Air Quality Modelling of a Car Cabin

Sammanfattning: Adverse health effects attributable to both short- and long-term exposure to air pollution have turned the focus on different microenvironments. The interior of vehicles is of relevance as road traffic emissions and re-suspension of road dust are major sources of pollutants associated with adverse health effects. Hence, the air quality inside vehicles deserves attention regarding human health. This thesis presents a new virtual methodology, using CFD, to study the distribution of fine particulate matter, PM2.5, inside a car cabin. In the CFD model, unsteady RANS and Lagrangian particle tracking were used to simulate particles entering from the exterior. In this study, a practical measurement of interior particle concentrations was also carried out as a first attempt to validate the CFD model. The objective was to find positions inside the cabin where elevated concentrations of PM2.5 are present. The results from the CFD simulations showed that significantly higher concentrations are present at head height in the front row. Due to a discrepancy in the investigated positions in the CFD model and the practical measurement, the simulation results could not be validated. Nevertheless, the simulation results in this study have provided guidelines for future measurements of interior particle concentrations.