Investigation of influence of forced ventilation through 3D textile on heat exchange properties of the textile layer

Abstract

The intention of this study was to create a computational model in micro-scale that allows to imitate heat and mass transfer through three-dimensional textile layer with and without forced ventilation. The four ventilation rates were used 0, 0.2, 0.4 and 0.8 dm3min-1. Approximation of a unit cell geometry and heat transfer process were considered. The time-dependent and steady-state simulations are based on Navier-Stokes/Brinkman partial differential equations, and energy equation. A finite element modelling package Comsol Multiphysics was used for numerical simulations. The Laminar flow (.spf) and Heat transfer in fluids (.ht) modes were coupled with non-isothermal flow (.nitf) multi-physics. The post-processing analysis was done using Matlab software. The outcomes of simulation are temperature distributions, surface average temperature and relative humidity through the thickness of the representative volume. The results enable to create a macro-scale models for efficient simulation of heat exchange in textile packages.