Abstract
Recently CFD simulations have been widely utilized for investigating indoor air environments. However, these quantitative observations are currently unsatisfactory, especially for natural 'convections in enclosures. By utilizing a scale model of a residential room equipped with a floor panel heating system, this study aims to provide detailed experimental data in order to verify observations made using CFD on natural convection. Here we present results of the PIV measurement in the boundary layer along the heated bottom surface of the test chamber. The test space was a rectangular enclosure filled with water. The bottom surface was uniformly heated and one of the vertical walls was cooled. The Rayleigh Number was kept at a constant value of 3.1×1010. To make the flow near the wall more visible, fluorescent tracers were used. A thin punching plate was set along the measuring plane in order to measure the image distortions caused by the non-uniform temperature field. The distorted image data were used to correct velocity data, and thus more accurate velocity distribution was obtained.
