Numerical and experimental investigations on jet characteristics and airflow patterns related to an air curtain subjected to external lateral flow

•A perturbed air curtain subjected to external lateral flow is investigated.•Experiments are performed on a reduced scale model of a RDC with LDV and PIV.•A CFD numerical model with the RSM is built with the ANSYS code.•A good agreement is obtained between numerical and experimental data.•Strong jet deviations are observed on the perturbed air curtain.

The objective of this study is to experimentally and numerically investigate the aerodynamic behaviour and the effectiveness of an air curtain confining cavity and subjected to external lateral flow. Experiments were carried out on a scale down model (1:5) under isothermal conditions representing a generic configuration of a display case, using LDV and PIV techniques to investigate the air flow characteristics. A numerical approach based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) Fluent code was used with two turbulence models: the standard k–ε model and the RSM. Comparisons of experimental and numerical data obtained with and without external perturbation make it possible to quantify the effect of the perturbation on the air curtain characteristics such as airflow patterns, velocity profiles, jet decay, and its stability as well as the ambient thermal entrainment. These comparisons also allow a critical evaluation of the performance of the two turbulence models for free and perturbed jets.