Air Curtains of Open Refrigerated Display Cases Revisited: A New Technique for Infiltration Rate Measurements

Air curtains are created in open refrigerated vertical display cases for creating an invisible barrier between the cold air inside and the warm air outside the case. A systematic approach is developed to minimize the entrainment and infiltration of warm air into the case by optimizing the performance of an air curtain through adjusting pertinent flow parameters and case geometry. A modular display case was manufactured for the parametric studies. In this modular display case the geometry and flow parameters were changed and the infiltration rate was measured using a new technique, tracer gas method, which could be performed noticeably faster than the conventional methods. This apparatus is referred to as the proof-of-concept air curtain (POCAC). A matrix of all possible permutations was constructed with the infiltration rate being the outcome of this matrix. This matrix was populated by actual experimental measurements as well as using validated Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) computer programs as a tool to acquire better resolution of the input and output datasets. All the problem variables are referred to as the input vector of all parameters that can be altered, and the output is the infiltration rate. An artificial neural network (ANN) program was used to provide the linkage between the input vector (problem variables) and the problem outcome (infiltration). This program can also be used by industry as a tool to estimate the infiltration rate for all existing open vertical display cases.