Past, Present, and Future Research Toward Air Curtain Performance Optimization

This paper presents a comprehensive discussion on past, present, and future research focused on display case air curtain performance characterization and optimization. The past research mostly relies on simplified analytical solutions for jets. The present approach takes a more comprehensive step toward understanding and quantification of all major parameters that affect the air curtain flow field by utilization of modern analytical/computational and experimental techniques. The goal of future work is to optimize air curtain performance as a function of the major design parameters by adoption a systematic approach. This approach would be independent of any particular display case design specifics and should be useful to all display case manufacturers.