Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Mixing Effectiveness Of Various Damper-Plenum Configurations, Harry J. Sauer, Pankaj Hande, Fathi Finaish

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Improper mixing of outside air and return air streams in building air conditioning systems has been recognized for years. The problems may lead to nuisance cycling, frequent freeze-stat trips and serious consequences of a frozen or ruptured conditioning coil. It was thought that typical solutions for the problem usually consist of preferred placement of outside air and return air duct penetrations to the mixing box, manipulation of the inlet damper angles and velocity ratio between the outside air and return air streams and the insertion of static flow mixers in the mixing box to help improve the thermal stratification. This …