Comfort Improvement in Air Conditioned Buses through the Homogenous Air Flow along the Hatrack by Using Different Types of Baffle Plates 2019-26-0367

India being a developing nation, there is significant improvement of road infrastructure across the country as well as the spending power and earnings of the common man. This leads to the new trend of customers willing to pay for a more comfortable travel through AC buses. To satisfy these demands, OEM’s are forced develop and manufacture huge numbers of AC buses. Although the OEM’s are meeting this demand of quantity, the quality aspect of the buses, i.e., climate comfort, is still subpar. One of the main reasons for this sub-quality comfort is the non homogenous distribution of air flow along the bus. This non homogeneity leads to the centre of the bus having very high air flow and thus overcooling conditions, while the front and rear of the bus receive very little air flow and thus receive under-cooling conditions.

To solve this concern of non homogeneity, we incorporated a new design in the hatrack, through the implementation of baffles and deflector in the hatrack. With this new design, air flow distribution was analyzed through CFD and corroborated with the physical trial of a vehicle with this new design. The results of the air flow variation, achieved through the physical trial of the vehicle, was that of homogenous air flow distribution with a variation of 1 m/s between front, middle and the rear zone of the hatrack. We then went on to implement this new design in few of the buses sold to customer. The feedback from the customers, received by us, was overwhelmingly positive and was encouraging, leading to roll out implementation of this new design for all production buses.