Providing human thermal comfort conditions for pilot in a desert helicopter

In this paper, forced turbulent convection flow and heat transfer of air inside a desert helicopter cabin was studied. The main goal was to provide human thermal comfort, by using cooling system, for a desert helicopter pilot in summer. A body subdomain was considered around the pilot that includes the pilot's using area in the cabin. The governing equations were numerically solved by the control volume approach based on the SIMPLE technique and standard k-ε turbulent model. The effects of air supply parameters velocity and temperature on pilot's thermal comfort are presented and the optimization was carried out to find the best case with the minimum predicted percentage dissatisfied (PPD). It was found that temperature and velocity of supply air have a remarkable influence on thermal comfort characteristics. The air temperature and air velocity in pilot's body subdomain decreased and increased respectively, by increasing supply air velocity. Finally, the predicted mean vote (PMV) and PPD indexes were calculated for different supply air performances and the minimum PPD was obtained for the case with supply air temperature and velocity of Tin=10 °C and Vin=0.4 m/s, respectively.