Measurement of airflow and pressure characteristics of a fan built in a car ventilation system

The aim of this study was to identify a set of operating points of a fan built in ventilation system of our test car. These operating points are given by the fan pressure characteristics and are defined by a pressure drop of the HVAC system (air ducts and vents) and volumetric flow rate of ventilation air. To cover a wide range of pressure drops situations, four cases of vent flaps setup were examined: (1) all vents opened, (2) only central vents closed (3) only central vents opened and (4) all vents closed. To cover a different volumetric flows, the each case was measured at least for four different speeds of fan defined by the fan voltage. It was observed that the pressure difference of the fan is proportional to the fan voltage and strongly depends on the throttling of the air distribution system by the settings of the vents flaps. In case of our test car we identified correlations between volumetric flow rate of ventilation air, fan pressure difference and fan voltage. These correlations will facilitate and reduce time costs of the following experiments with this test car.