Abstract

Thermal stratification is an important phenomenon to be evaluated and studied to save energy consumed in fully insulated environments and to improve indoor air quality and human comfort. An analytical study to investigate stratified flow characteristics in a ventilated environment was presented. Most existing studies were either numerical or experimental and correlations for predicting characteristics of stratified flow, such as temperature distribution, temperature gradient, stratified layer thickness and height were based on empirical data. A simple mathematical model was developed to predict these characteristics. The predictions were compared with the published experimental data and good agreement has been obtained. Such a simple model would be very useful to practicing engineers for HVAC and designing applications.

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