Journal of Food Engineering 81 (2007) 144–156

www.elsevier.com/locate/jfoodeng

Numerical simulation of air flow and heat transfer in

domestic refrigerators
O. Laguerre a,*, S. Ben Amara a, J. Moureh a, D. Flick b
a
UMR Génie Industriel Alimentaire INRA-INAPG-Cemagref-ENSIA, BP. 44, 92163 Antony Cedex, France
b
UMR Génie Industriel Alimentaire INRA-INAPG-Cemagref-ENSIA, 16 rue Claude Bernard, 75231 Paris, France

Received 24 February 2006; received in revised form 17 October 2006; accepted 21 October 2006
Available online 15 December 2006

Abstract

This work was carried out in order to study heat transfer by natural convection in domestic refrigerators without ventilation. Only the
refrigerating compartment was studied for three configurations: empty refrigerator, refrigerator equipped with glass shelves and refrig-
erator loaded by product. Both experimental and numerical approaches were used.
The simulations were carried out using CFD (computational fluid dynamic) software by taking into account or by neglecting radi-
ation heat transfer. The following conditions were assumed: constant evaporator temperature, three-directional laminar air flow. Numer-
ical results show temperature stratification in the refrigerating compartment (warm zone at the top and cold zone on the bottom) for all
configurations. A comparison of the calculated air temperature and the experimental values shows good agreement when radiation is
taken into account.
Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: CFD; Simulation; Closed cavity; Refrigeration; Domestic refrigerator

1. Introduction refrigerator is important for food quality control. Indeed,

if the consumer knows the position of warm and cold zones
Domestic refrigerators are widely used in industrialized in the refrigerator, products can be placed correctly.
countries. There are approximately 1 billion domestic This work was carried out in order to gain a better
refrigerators worldwide (IIR, 2002). In France, there are insight into air flow and heat transfer inside a refrigerator.
1.7 refrigerators per household (AFF, 2001). In developing Three configurations were studied: an empty refrigerator
countries, the production is rising steadily: total production with and without shelves, and a loaded refrigerator. The
rose 30% in 2000 (Billiard, 2005). Some indications show objective was to quantify the air temperature and velocity
that food is often stored in domestic refrigerators at tem- distribution in the refrigerating compartment in the pres-
peratures that are too high. In refrigerators without venti- ence of obstacles (shelves and product) and to compare
lation, strong temperature heterogeneity is often observed, the results with those obtained using an empty compart-
with warm zones (sanitary risk) and cold zones (freezing ment. The influence of heat exchange through natural con-
risk) due to very low air circulation. For this type of refrig- vection (between the air and the walls) and by radiation
erator, widely used in Europe and in developing countries, (between the internal walls) was studied. Both experimental
heat transfer occurs principally by natural convection. and numerical (CFD software) approaches were used.
Knowledge of air temperature and velocity profiles in a The practical objective of this study is to predict the
warm and cold zones in a domestic refrigerator. This objec-
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 140 966 121; fax: +33 140 966 075. tive can be reached by the characterisation of air flow and
E-mail address: [email protected] (O. Laguerre). heat transfer in the appliance.

0260-8774/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2006.10.029
 O. Laguerre et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 81 (2007) 144–156 145

Nomenclature

I intensity of radiation, W m2 per unit solid an- Tc cold-wall temperature, °C or K

gle Ts surface temperature, °C or K
L characteristic length, m DT temperature difference between cold and warm
~
n normal vector walls, °C or K
g acceleration due to gravity (9.81 m s2)
Nu Nusselt number Greek symbols
Q heating power, W a air thermal diffusivity, m2 s1
R radius, m b thermal expansion coefficient, K1
Ra Rayleigh number e emissivity of the wall
NRC radiation–convection interaction parameter q air density, kg m3
T air temperature, °C or K k air thermal conductivity, W m1 K1
Tamb ambient temperature, °C or K t air kinematic viscosity, m2 s1
Tevap evaporator temperature, °C or K X solid angle
Th warm wall temperature, °C or K U radiative flux, W m2

2. Literature review loop near to walls where the air temperature and velocity
vary rapidly. The second one consists of small recircula-
To demonstrate the air flow and heat transfer in a refrig- tion loops located between the boundary layers (near
erator, literature on free convection phenomena in a closed walls) and the centre of the cavity.
cavity will be presented, then studies applied to domestic Eckert and Carlson (1961) carried out an experimental
refrigerators will be mentioned. study and they observed that outside the boundary layers,
the temperature is homogeneous at a given height and this
2.1. Air flow and heat transfer in an empty cavity temperature increases in the vertical direction. They also
proposed a correlation between Nusselt (Nu) and Rayleigh
Air flow by natural convection in an empty cavity is (Ra) numbers. No velocity measurements were undertaken
related to the difference in wall temperatures. Only conven- in this study.
tional convection (one vertical cold wall and one vertical Ostrach (1988), Catton (1978) and Yang (1987) carried
warm wall) is presented in this article. This configuration out a literature review on this subject, which presents the
is often observed in domestic refrigerators where an evap- experimental and modelling results (2-D and 3-D). These
orator is embedded in the vertical back wall and the door authors emphasise the importance of the aspect ratio of
located opposite this wall is warm. The air density varia- the cavity and the temperature difference between walls
tion due to the temperature gradient (perpendicular to on the flow regime.
the gravitational direction) contributes to air circulation, Heat exchange by radiation between the internal walls
hot air being lighter than cold air. of the cavity is as important as that achieved by natural
The flow regime in natural convection is characterised convection and this should be taken into account. Sev-
by the Rayleigh number (Ra) defined as
gbDTL3
Ra ¼ ð1Þ
am
In general, the critical Rayleigh number, which distin-
guishes the transition from laminar to turbulent flows, is
approximately 109 (depending on the geometry and bound-
ary conditions, Incropera & Dewitt, 1996).
Several experimental studies have been carried out to
measure air temperature and/or velocity in closed cavities
(Ampofo & Karayiannis, 2003; Armaly, Li, & Nie, 2003;
Betts & Bokhari, 2000; Mergui & Penot, 1996; Tian &
Karayiannis, 2000).
Tian and Karayiannis (2000) used a Doppler laser
anemometer to measure the air velocity in a rectangular
cavity (height  width  depth = 75  75  150 cm, Ra =
1.58  109) (Fig. 1). They observed two types of air cir-
culation. The first one is the principal air recirculation Fig. 1. Air flow in a closed cavity (Tian & Karayiannis, 2000).
146 O. Laguerre et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 81 (2007) 144–156

eral authors (Balaji & Venkateshan, 1994; Ramesh &

Venkateshan, 1999; Velusamy, Sundarajan, & Seethar-
amu, 2001; Li & Li, 2002) showed by experimental and
numerical approaches that these two heat transfer modes
occur simultaneously. Ramesh and Venkateshan (1999)
showed experimentally that for a square enclosure (verti-
cal walls maintained at 35 and 65 °C, adiabatic horizon-
tal walls, Ra = 5  105), the heat transfer by convection
and radiation between high emissive vertical walls
(e = 0.85) is twice that between polished ones (e = 0.05).
The result of this study is relatively different from the
case of a domestic refrigerator since the wall temperature
difference between the evaporator and the other walls is
on average 15 K. The effect of radiation is, therefore, less
significant. Balaji and Venkateshan (1994) proposed cor-
Fig. 2. Various heat exchange modes and air flow inside a domestic
relations (established from numerical simulations) to refrigerator (source: Laguerre and Flick, 2004).
express the convection and radiation in a square cavity
in function of e, Ra, Tc/Th and a radiation–convection
 
rT 4h L Sun, 1996; Graviss & Zurada, 1998; Grazzini & Rinaldi,
interaction parameter N RC ¼ kðT h T cÞ
.
2001; Radermacher & Kim, 1996). The main objective
These correlations show that the radiation effect of these studies is to optimize energy consumption. How-
increases when the wall emissivity and/or wall tempera- ever, fewer studies have been carried out on phenomena
tures increase. Moreover, Li and Li (2002) reported that inside the refrigerating compartment. Among these stud-
the radiation increases in comparison with convection as ies, those conducted by Masjuki et al. (2001) and James
the size of the enclosure increases. Colomer, Costa, Con- and Evans (1992) were experimental studies on empty
sul, and Oliva (2004) reported that in a transparent med- and loaded refrigerators. The objective of these studies
ium, radiation significantly increases the heat flux. These was to analyze the effects of several parameters on the
authors also reported that for a given Planck number, temperature in the refrigerating compartment (thermostat
and constant reference temperature ratio, the contribu- setting, frequency of door openings, filled volume, tem-
tion of radiation remains almost constant for a range perature and humidity of ambient air). It is difficult to
of Rayleigh number. An estimation of convection and understand the mechanism of heat transfer by natural
radiation heat transfer in a refrigerator was carried out convection from the results obtained by these studies,
in our previous study (Laguerre & Flick, 2004). The due to the complexity of the refrigerator operation (com-
equivalent radiative heat transfer coefficient between pressor ‘‘on” and ‘‘off” cycles, different degrees of insula-
two parallel plates was evaluated to represent the radia- tion in walls, heat loss through gaps, etc.). Measurement
tive exchange between the evaporator wall and the door. of air flow in a freezer compartment under real operating
It was found that, the radiative heat transfer coefficient is conditions was carried out by Lacerda, Melo, Barbosa,
the same order of magnitude as the convective heat and Duarte (2005) using PIV (particle image velocimetry).
transfer coefficient. This confirms the importance of It was observed that the flow field was strongly influence
radiation. by the temperature variations due to the ‘‘on” and ‘‘off”
operation cycles of compressor. This behavior was attrib-
2.2. Air flow and heat transfer in a domestic refrigerator uted to natural convection and the physical properties
(viscosity) of air, which strongly depend on the tempera-
In an empty refrigerator, cold air near the evaporator ture. Another study on air flow in a ventilated domestic
flows downward and warm air near the door and the other freezing compartment was carried out by Lee, Baek,
side walls flows upwards (Fig. 2). The heat exchanges inside Chung, and Rhee (1999). In this study, comparison of
the cavity are related to natural convection between inter- the velocity field obtained by CFD simulation and by
nal walls and air, radiation between evaporator and the experiment (PIV measurement) was undertaken. These
other walls and conduction within the walls (Laguerre & authors observed that the flow was very complex: jet-like
Flick, 2004). In the case of a refrigerator filled with prod- flow around entrance ports, impinging and stagnation
ucts, the products are cooled by natural convection, by flow on the walls and large recirculation flow in the
radiation between the surface of the products and the inter- cavity.
nal walls of the refrigerator, and through conduction and Several numerical studies have been carried out on heat
radiation between products. transfer in empty domestic refrigerators (Deschamps,
Several studies have been carried out on the cold pro- Prata, Lopes, & Schmid, 1999; Pereira & Nieckele, 1997;
duction system of domestic refrigerators (Alsaad & Ham- Silva & Melo, 1998). However, few studies have been car-
mad, 1998; Bansal, Wich, & Browne, 2001; Chen, Wu, & ried out on loaded refrigerators. The numerical studies
 O. Laguerre et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 81 (2007) 144–156 147

Table 1 3. Materials and methods

Characteristics of the refrigerator
External dimensions (height  width  depth) 149 cm  60 cm  59 cm 3.1. Refrigerator
Internal dimensions (height  width  depth) 136 cm  52 cm  44 cm
Dimensions of the evaporator 90 cm  48 cm
Thermostat setting +5 °C
A static cold refrigerator (without ventilation) was used
Number of shelves 4 in this work. It was a single-door appliance with only a
refrigerating compartment (without a freezer). The general
characteristics are shown in Table 1.
mentioned previously provide knowledge on the tempera- Three cases were studied (Fig. 3): an empty refrigerator
ture and velocity heterogeneity under determined condi- without shelves, empty refrigerator fitted with glass shelves
tions. However, radiation was not taken into (5 mm thickness, thermal conductivity of glass
consideration in spite of the fact that this heat transfer 0.75 W m1 K1) and a refrigerator equipped with glass
mode is of the same order of magnitude as that of convec- shelves and loaded with a ‘‘test product”. This product is
tion. In our study, both empty and loaded refrigerators made of methylcellulose (thermal conductivity
were studied and both natural convection and radiation 0.5 W m1 K1) and the dimensions of one package are
were taken into account in the simulation. 10  10  5 cm (length  width  depth). The arrange-

Fig. 3. Domestic refrigerator geometry: (a) empty refrigerator; (b) refrigerator fitted with glass shelves; (c) refrigerator with glass shelves and products.
148 O. Laguerre et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 81 (2007) 144–156

ment of the packages is shown in Fig. 3c. All experiments of the refrigerator insulation can be calculated knowing
were carried out in a temperature-controlled room Q1 + Q2 and Tint  Text.
(20 ± 0.2 °C). As shown in Fig. 3, the evaporator is located The measurement was used afterwards for the bound-
in the upper part of the cabinet. The indentation observed ary conditions in the CFD simulation. In fact, this exper-
in the lower right area of the figures represents the com- imental thermal resistance takes into account the thermal
pressor placement. To avoid a too complex geometry, the resistance between external air and internal walls. There-
containers for butter, eggs and bottles usually attached to fore, a correction was undertaken on the measured value
the door were removed during our experiments. This facil- by subtracting the thermal resistance between internal air
itates the meshing of the refrigerator and the result
interpretation.
Table 2
Resolution parameters used in simulation
3.2. Measurement of the thermal resistance of refrigerator
Relaxation factor Type of discretization
insulation
Pressure 0.8 Presto
Density 1 –
Measurement of the thermal resistance of refrigerator Gravity forces 1 –
insulation was carried out in a temperature-controlled Momentum 0.2 Second order upwind
room (6 °C). A heating coil was placed inside the ‘‘switch Energy 1 Second order upwind
off” refrigerator. The heat supplied to the coil is equal to Radiation 1 –
the heat loss to external air through the walls. The heating Pressure–velocity – Simple
power was adjusted in such a manner as to maintain the
average internal air temperature at 30 °C. In this manner,
the average temperature of the insulating walls is almost Table 3
the same as under real operating conditions. To ensure a Number of cells used for the simulations
homogeneous air temperature inside the refrigerator, a Mesh number Height Half width Depth Total
small fan was installed near the heating coil. The internal (136 cm) (26 cm) (44 cm)
air temperature (Tint controlled at 30 °C), external air tem- Empty refrigerator 138 28 66 255 024
perature (Text controlled at 6 °C), power supplied to the Refrigerator with 222 28 66 410 256
heating coil (Q1) and fan (Q2) were recorded when the shelves
Refrigerator with 240 62 74 1 101 120
steady state was attained (after 12 h) and the average val-
shelves and products
ues were calculated over 3 h. Thus, the thermal resistance

Fig. 4. Air (average value on the symmetry plan), side wall (average value of three measurements: top, middle and bottom levels) and evaporator
temperature changes in the empty refrigerator without shelves (thermostat setting at 5 °C).
 O. Laguerre et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 81 (2007) 144–156 149

and walls. The internal convective heat transfer coeffi- 4. Modelling

cient was assumed to be about 10 W m2 K1. This cor-
rection is weak because the thermal resistance between 4.1. Main assumptions and boundary conditions
air and internal wall represents only around 7% of the
overall thermal resistance (between external and internal In the present study, the Rayleigh number (Ra) is about
air). 6  108 (estimation based on the height of the evaporator
and the temperature difference between the internal air
3.3. Temperature measurement and the cold-wall surface). Laminar flow assumption was
made for the flow regime in our simulation since
Air and product temperatures were measured experi- Ra < 109. Furthermore, several numerical studies showed
mentally using calibrated thermocouples (Type T) placed that turbulence does not change the predicted air tempera-
in different positions of the symmetry plane of the refriger- ture pattern (Deschamps et al., 1999; Kingston, Woolley, &
ator and on the plane situated at 8 cm from side wall Tridimas, 1994). Boussinesq approximation was used since
(Fig. 3). On each plane, the air temperature was measured the air temperature variation is small compared with the
at five height levels (31.0, 61.0, 94.0, 114.5, 134.5 cm) and mean absolute value.
for each height, five air temperature measurements were The thermal boundary conditions are based on experi-
recorded (1, 2, 21.5, 42, 43 cm from the evaporator). mental data:
Firstly, the refrigerator operated over 24 h to ensure stabil-
ization conditions, then the temperatures were recorded  Uniform global heat transfer coefficient between exter-
every 2 min for 24 h and the average value was calculated nal air and internal wall (0.34 W m2 K1).
at each measurement point. An example of temperature  Constant external air temperature (20 °C).
evolution inside the refrigerator is shown in Fig. 4. It can  Constant evaporator temperature (0.5 °C) which is the
be seen that the evaporator temperature varies from average value during ‘on’ and ‘off’ running cycles of
16 °C to +7 °C, due to the thermal inertia, the air temper- compressor. This constant temperature is used in order
ature varies less, from +3.5 °C to +7 °C, and the wall tem- to avoid excessive complexity in the calculation and to
perature varies from 4 °C to 9 °C. reduce calculation time.

Fig. 5. Mesh structure: (a) empty refrigerator; (b) refrigerator fitted with glass shelves; (c) refrigerator loaded with the ‘‘test product”.
150 O. Laguerre et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 81 (2007) 144–156

The simulations were performed with the finite volume Transient simulation was performed but only the results
method using CFD software Fluent 6.1 with the resolution obtained after simulation convergence were used in the
parameters indicated in Table 2. comparison with the experimental values.

Fig. 6. Predicted temperature fields (°C): (a) on the symmetry plan of empty refrigerator; (b) on the symmetry plan of refrigerator with glass shelves; (c) on
the symmetry plan of refrigerator loaded with products; (d) on the plan situated at 8 cm from the side wall of refrigerator loaded with products.
 O. Laguerre et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 81 (2007) 144–156 151

4.2. Mesh between walls and air and by radiation between the internal
walls of the refrigerating compartment.
Structured mesh was used to describe the geometry of
the refrigerator. Finer meshes were used near walls, shelves 5.1.1. Temperature fields
and products. The number of cells used in each case is The temperature fields obtained from simulations for the
shown in Table 3 and mesh structures are shown in different cases studied are shown in Fig. 6. Considering only
Fig. 5. To ensure that the results were not influenced by the main cavity (excluding the vegetable box), for all cases,
the cell numbers, a sensitivity study was carried out before- thermal stratification is observed with the cold zone at the
hand. Only one half of the refrigerator was meshed because bottom (2 °C) of the refrigerating compartment and the
of the symmetry plane. warm zone at the top (8–9 °C). In addition, a cold zone is also
observed along the back wall. This is related to cold air com-
4.3. Discrete ordinate method (DO) for radiation ing from the evaporator. When the refrigerator is loaded
with products, the temperature of the product located near
The discrete ordinate method (Chui & Raithby, 1993) the evaporator is lower than that located near the door. In
was successfully used to simulate the coupling of convec- the top half of the compartment, the temperature is relatively
tion and radiation in closed cavity (Colomer et al., 2004; homogeneous at a given height (except in the boundary lay-
Sanchez & Smith, 1992). ers near the walls). The temperature of the vegetable box is
This model can take into account the participating med- almost constant for all cases studied (8 °C).
ium. However, in our case, air is considered as transparent The temperature field is slightly influenced by the pres-
(with neither absorption nor diffusion). The general equa- ence of obstacles: shelves and products. A slightly lower
tion of heat transfer by radiation (in a given ~
s direction) is temperature is observed at the bottom and a slightly higher
~  ðIð~ one at the top compared with the empty refrigerator case.
r r;~ sÞ ¼ 0
sÞ~ ð2Þ
This is due to the fact that the shelves and/or the products
Ið~ sÞ is radiative intensity in ~
r;~ s direction (at ~
r position) slowed down the air circulation in the central zone of the
(W m2 per unit solid angle). refrigerator. The presence of shelves and/or products also
For a gray surface of emissivity er, the net radiative flux influenced the main air circulation in the boundary layers
leaving the surface is situated along the evaporator and the side walls. However,
Z this influence is weak because of the presence of air spaces
Urad out ¼ ð1  er Þ s ~
I in~ n dX þer rT 4s ð3Þ between the shelves and the vertical walls (1.2 cm between
~s~
n>0
|fflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl{zfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl} the back wall and the shelves), which facilitates the air flow.
incident flux In our previous study, it was found that the thickness of the
The walls are assumed as gray diffuse: Iout = /rad_out/p. Iin boundary layer was less than 2 cm (Laguerre, Ben Amara,
is intensity of incident radiation in ~s direction (at ~
r posi- & Flick, 2005).
tion); ~
n is normal vector; Ts is surface temperature, K; X In addition to the overall thermal stratification in the
is solid angle. cavity, stratification is also observed in each gap between
A sensitivity study of solid angle discretization was car- two shelves or between a shelf and a product. It is to be
ried out beforehand in order to ensure that the simulation emphasised that for the refrigerator loaded with the ‘‘test
results were not influenced by the number of solid angle product”, the symmetry plane is located in the gap between
subdivisions. two piles. This explains why the packages are invisible on
this plane (Fig. 6c). On the plane situated at 8 cm from a
5. Results and discussion side wall which cuts the product pile (Fig. 6d), a cold prod-
uct zone near the evaporator can be clearly distinguished.
5.1. Numerical simulation (taking into account radiation) This is related to the blockage of cold air by the product.
The average and maximum air temperatures in all cases
The results presented in this paragraph concern simula- are reported in Table 4. The air temperatures increase with
tion, which takes into account heat transfer by convection increasing numbers of obstacles.

Table 4
Average and maximum air temperatures for the three simulations
Average temperature in the main Maximum temperature in the main Average temperature in the
cavity (°C) cavity (°C) vegetable box (°C)
Empty refrigerator 3.8 8.2 7.4
Refrigerator with glass shelves 4.0 9.0 8.2
Refrigerator with glass shelves and 5.1 9.1 8.0
products
152 O. Laguerre et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 81 (2007) 144–156

5.1.2. Air velocity field the side wall (Fig. 7d) for the different cases studied. Con-
Fig. 7 presents the air velocity fields on the symmetry sidering only the main cavity (excluding the vegetable box),
plane (Fig. 7a–c) and on the plane situated at 8 cm from for all cases, the main air circulation is observed near the

Fig. 7. Path lines: (a) on the symmetry plan of the empty refrigerator; (b) on the symmetry plan of the refrigerator fitted with glass shelves; (c) on the
symmetry plan of the refrigerator loaded with products; (d) on the plan situated at 8 cm from the side wall of refrigerator loaded with products.
 O. Laguerre et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 81 (2007) 144–156 153

walls, and constitutes a recirculation loop. Air flows down- of the refrigerator (umax  0.2 m s1). Air then flows
wards along the evaporator while its velocity increases upwards along the door and the side walls of the refriger-
along the course to attain a maximum value at the bottom ator while its velocity decreases progressively and becomes

Fig. 8. Temperature field (radiation not taken into account): (a) on the symmetry plan of the empty refrigerator; (b) on the symmetry plan of the
refrigerator fitted with glass shelves; (c) on the symmetry plan of the refrigerator loaded with the ‘‘test product”; (d) on the plan situated at 8 cm from the
side wall of the refrigerator loaded with products.
154 O. Laguerre et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 81 (2007) 144–156

stagnant at the top of the refrigerator. This observation is glass shelves, in addition to the main air flow along the
in agreement with the air temperature field shown in Fig. 6, walls as mentioned previously, there are also small air
with cold air located at the bottom of the cavity and warm loops between the shelves. For the refrigerator loaded with
air at the top. It can also be observed that there is a weak products, air flows in the gaps between the shelves and the
horizontal air flow from the door to the evaporator. How- products (Fig. 7d).
ever, the air velocity at the centre of the cavity is very low It should be remembered that the containers attached to
(<0.04 m s1). In the case of the refrigerator fitted with the door were not represented in our study. In practice

Fig. 9. Comparison between experimental air temperatures and predicted values obtained by simulation with and without radiation: (a) empty
refrigerator; (b) refrigerator fitted with glass shelves; (c) refrigerator loaded with products.
 O. Laguerre et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 81 (2007) 144–156 155

these containers are an obstacle to airflow along the door 6. Conclusions

and reduce the air velocity in this area.
Considering the vegetable box, one or two air recircula- Numerical simulation of air flow and heat transfer was
tion loops were observed (Fig. 7). This is due to the pres- carried out within the refrigerating compartment of a
ence of the glass shelf (cold wall), which separates the domestic refrigerator without a fan. Three configurations
vegetable box from the main cavity, and the five other walls were studied: an empty refrigerator, an empty refrigerator
which are warmer (heat loss through these walls). fitted with glass shelves and a refrigerator loaded with
products. When radiation was taken into consideration in
5.2. Comparison with numerical simulation without radiation simulation, the predicted air temperatures were in good
agreement with the experimental values. However, when
Fig. 8 presents the air temperature field on the symmetry radiation was not taken into account, the temperature
plane obtained by simulation without taking into consider- was over-estimated, particularly at the top of the refrigera-
ation radiation (between internal walls of the refrigerating tor. Radiation allows heat exchange, particularly between
compartment, shelves and product surface). It was the top wall and the cold wall (evaporator); consequently,
observed that overall the temperature field is similar to that it limits the stratification phenomena.
present when radiation is taken into account (a cold zone The obstacles (shelves and/or products) slow down the
at the bottom and a warm zone at the top). However, strat- air circulation in the central zone of the refrigerator and
ification is more pronounced without radiation, and this mildly influence the main air circulation along the walls.
leads to a higher temperature at the top of the cavity. In This is confirmed by the maximum values of air tempera-
fact, for an empty refrigerator, the maximum temperature ture: 8.2 °C for an empty refrigerator without shelves and
rises from 8 °C (with radiation) to 15 °C (without radia- 9.1 °C for an empty refrigerator with shelves and refrigera-
tion). This temperature increase can be explained by the tor loaded with products.
fact that, without radiation, there is no heat exchange Whatever the configuration studied (empty with/with-
between the warm top wall and the other colder walls, par- out shelves, loaded with products) for this type of refriger-
ticularly the evaporator wall. This contributes to a high air ator, the air temperature at the top of the refrigerator is
temperature at the top position. When radiation is taken about 5 °C higher than the average air temperature, and
into account, the heat exchange between the top wall and therefore it is important to avoid placing sensitive products
the other walls tends to reduce the top wall temperature in this position.
and consequently reduces air temperature near this wall. The CFD simulation developed by our work can be
From a microbiological point of view, the growth rate is further used as a tool to study the influence of operating
much higher at 15 °C than at 8 °C. It is therefore necessary conditions on the temperature and velocity fields: the
to take into consideration radiation in the simulation in evaporator temperature (parameter related to the ther-
order to better describe the phenomena occurring in mostat setting by the consumer), the dimensions of the
domestic refrigerators. evaporator (parameter related to design) and the percent-
age of product-occupied volume in the refrigerating
5.3. Comparison between the predicted air temperature and compartment.
experimental values
Acknowledgement
Fig. 9 presents a comparison between the experimental
and predicted air temperature results (with and without The authors would like to thank to the French Ministry
taking into account radiation). It can be seen that the sim- of Agriculture and the ‘‘Ile de France Regional Council”
ulation results with radiation agreed with the experimental for their financial support.
values to a greater extent, while simulation without radia-
tion over-estimated the air temperature, particularly at References
the top of the refrigerator. The peaks observed on the tem-
perature profile in the presence of shelves and/or products AFF, Association Francßaise du Froid (2001). Conseil National du Froid,
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butane mixture for domestic refrigerators. Applied Thermal Engineer-
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The agreement between the experimental and simulation Ampofo, F., & Karayiannis, T. G. (2003). Experimental benchmark data
results is relatively poor in the case of a loaded refrigerator, for turbulent natural convection in an air filled square cavity.
even though the radiative heat exchange between the prod- International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 46(19), 3551–3572.
uct and the walls was taken into account. This may be Armaly, B. F., Li, A., & Nie, J. H. (2003). Measurements in three-
dimensional laminar separated flow. International Journal of Heat and
explained by the geometry complexity. Further refinement Mass Transfer, 46, 3573–3582.
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