Most HVAC application are (partly) installed in an outdoor condition. The technical installation is subjected to the weather elements such as rain, snow, sand blizzards,… . To provide reliable products to the market, the HVAC appliances need to withstand these conditions without impact to their functionality. To ensure these capabilities, all outdoor products are subjected to a series of prototype tests.
To reduce the amount of trial and error stages in testing, this thesis should develop a pragmatic R&D approach to evaluate the possible risk of ingress of water droplets, snowflakes, sand grains, … . This thesis should investigate particle flow simulation by CFD study. The approach should increase the awareness about the possible ingress locations and visualization of potential problems in an early prototype stage. A study on the phenomena should clarify what parts of the prototype are relevant for the CFD evaluation and what can be removed to increase computational efficiency.