ABSTRACT

The world is facing a major issue of heating of car parked under direct sunlight. It
ends up in high loss of energy to run the AC of cars for longer time on higher power, giving
quite less fuel economy at the end, and also decreasing the passengers comfort.
So, there has to be a proper solution to cool down such heated up cars. For that, one
of the solution is to use the inbuilt fan of the car to introduce external cold air in the air cavity
of interior of the car and exhausting the hot air from the cavity to atmosphere via some vents
provided in the roof of the car. By calculations and simulations, it was found out that the
solution we found is at least feasible to do this job in quite shorter time period. Still, research
is in its beginning phase, a lot of research left to know the exact amount of resistance offered
by the car interior, to know the exact time and power to be taken by the car fan to take the
inner temperature back to the normal.

Key words: Car cooling, solar radiation, heating of car, convection, economy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page No.

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Review of Literature
2.1 Objective of Project
Chapter 3 Details and methodology of Experimental of

1
2
3
4

Simulation Work
Chapter 4 Results and Discussions
Chapter 5 Summary and Conclusions
LIST OF FIGURES
REFERENCE

5
7
8
9

Chapter 1
Introduction
Nowadays we face a humiliating problem of solar heating in our car. When we park
our car under sunlight, it gets heated due to radiation entering into car through windshields
and windows, made of glass. This glass allows solar radiation to enter in the car cavity but
resists the infrared radiation to escape from car cavity, which is emitted by the car interior.
This radiation is stored inside the car cavity in form of heat, heating up the car interior as well
as inside air, similar to the Green House Effect. So, thats how car gets heated. And this all
happens in a short time. So when the person return to his car and enters in it, the inside air
temperature is about 55 C or more, which is high enough to put that person in a miserable
state! Even sometimes, children left unattended in such cars die due to hyperthermia!
So we took this issue as our project to know if we could somehow find a feasible
solution to reduce this troublesome effect. For that, first, we analyzed the whole scenario of
Heating of a car due to solar radiation and also studied some alternative existing solutions
to prevent this but none of them were working satisfactorily.
So we got to find an innovative idea that would be feasible, reliable as well as
economical.

Chapter 2
Review of Literature
Solar radiation intensity is quite high in countries like India and most of the Gulf
countries including Oman, Iran, and Iraq etc. So, solar heating of car is quite a big issue there.
In literature, we found that if we park car under sunlight for one hour and if outside air
temperature is 25 Celsius then when we come back, the inside air temperature will be around
55 to 60 Celsius, and dashboard temperature would be around 80 Celsius. And the other
components of car like seat, steering, gear rod also get heated to an undesired extent. This is
not at all feasible condition to drive a car. So a person has to wait till the inner compartment
gets cooled down. This wastes time and energy of the air conditioner of car.
The reason why inside temperature of car rises to this extent is transmissivity of the
windshield glass, which is just in the front of driver seat. It allows to enter ultraviolet rays of
solar radiation and thats how energy enter in the car compartment. It is absorbed by different
components of car and then they emit the radiation, but this radiation is in the infrared region.
For infrared region, car glass works as an opaque surface. Hence all the radiation is reflected
back in the compartment. Thus energy continuously enter in the car and it cannot escape from
the car. Thats why the inside temperature rises to such an undesirable extent. Interior air
temperature of unshaded parked car under direct sunlight can reach up to 70 Celsius in a
country like Baghdad. [1]
In US, many child deaths occurred due to child being left unattended in car. This
occurred due to the absorption of high amount of heat by body than it can sustain. Many pats
also die because of this. It is known as hyperthermia.
There were many alternative solutions found which we are presenting here.
Use of the cardboard car shade to cover the car externally and windows part down by
1 cm gave good result in achieving lower average maximum temperature of all interior parts,
with higher difference of reduction at dashboard, steering wheel and inside of the air.
Use of the cardboard car shade behind wind shield reduced dashboard temperature to
40% from the base case (in which no shading is provided).
Shelter with windows part down by 1 cm gave inside air temperature only 3 to 4
Celsius more than outside air temperature.

There are many limitations. Such as we cannot keep open our car window partly by
1cm. This is a possible theft condition. The other issue can be stated as follow.
We cannot possibly remember to keep the shade with us all the time and even if we
manage to keep it with use then it is very tedious job to cover every time when you park your
car. Thus practically, none of the above solution is feasible.
So, here is the actual objective of our project.

2.1 Objective of Project

To find out feasible solution for cooling of a parked car.

(Because the heating cant be prevented)
To analyze if the natural convection is sufficient enough to cool down the car up to

desired condition or not.

If not, then which of the mechanical draft system should be used: Forced or Induced.
Do the simulation of the system and find out what power consumed by fan and also,
find out the minimum time requirement for cooling the car up to desired limits.

Chapter 3
Details and methodology of Experimental or Simulation Work
First we needed to see if we provide vents at top and bottom of the car then is it
possible to reduce the effect of the solar radiation or not. This was accounted under natural
convection. For that we studied buoyancy force and stack effect. And from that we designed
necessary changes in our car as per our primary requirements. Then we calculated density
difference generated between inside air and outside air. From that we calculated pressure
gradient which we will be getting when the vents are open. So we got the total pressure
gradient, but we didnt know the pressure loss occurring in the compartment due to resistance
of different components like seat, steering wheel, dashboard, and windscreen. Because all of
them are made of different materials and having different properties. And no reference data
could be found in any research or review paper we referred. So, we had to choose between
experimental or simulation method.
For simulation, we needed to make a replica of car interior in a software with exact
dimensions and inclusion of each and every components as far as possible. So, it came out as
quite a lengthy and tedious job which couldnt be done properly in a short time period of
around a month. So we tried to know if it was somehow possible making a model of actual
car! Now, thats not actually quite feasible, too. Because the big parts of actual car, like
steering wheel, dashboard, and windscreen are made of different materials and to make a
model, its needed to use the same material for the same part in the entire model to get the
same qualities and properties as we get in an actual car.
So, both the ways, simulation with FluentTM of ANSYS or making a model of car
with least tolerance and allowance offered, were of a lot of time takers. That way, we had to
drop both the ways for the matter of time, and we could at least make a conceptual model of
our idea.
So, now, we were not focusing of considering exact resistance offered by car interior
but, made a generalized model of the same with some major allowance taken in consideration.
That idea also included the use of the inbuilt fan comes in car to introduce external air in the
car interior to eliminate the need of an extra fan to be installed and to make the concept more
economical. That way, we only need to provide a few closable holes in the roof of the car.
In short, now we could find approximate time taken by the fan of a car to cool down
the interior by some extent, which is shown in the result section.

Chapter 4
Results and Discussions
The results we were getting from simulation software ANSYS were quite
satisfactory. The images of the same is shown in the next page. The simulation was
considered for 5 minutes for the first run. It came out as, the front seats and dashboard areas
are around 20 or more C colder than they were initially. So, first it was at 77C and after 5
minutes of the process of cooling, the seat temperature was shown to be around in the range
of 57C.
After continuing this process for around 15 minutes, the results were as desired. The
inside air temperature was fallen around 40C and the interior parts like steering wheel,
dashboard and seats were cooled down of an average temperature difference of 35C
So, now its a normal condition, or at least a bearable condition of the car inside for
the person to sit inside and drive. That doesnt mean the person needs to wait till 15 minutes
before entering in the car, but the automatic temperature sensor of the car will be ON for 24
hours. Whenever it detects increment of temperature beyond desired conditions, itll
command the main system computer of the car to start the engine and start the fan while
opening the roof vents for hot air exhaustion.

Chapter 5
Summary and Conclusions
From this research, we could know an innovative alternative for the solution to the
issue of heating of a car parked in direct sunlight. Again, this is a cure, not prevention. To run
the fan of car, again, therell be loss of energy, but comparatively quite lower than that used
by the AC running at high power set by the person.
Still, a lot of research left to know the exact amount of resistance offered by the car
interior, to know the exact time and power to be taken by the car fan to take the inner
temperature back to the normal.
But at least, we could conclude that, this idea can be actually implemented.

REFERENCE
[1] Issam Mohammed Ali Aljubury, Ammar Ali Farhan, Munther Abdullah Mussa
Experimental Study of Interior Temperature Distribution Inside Parked Automobile Cabin
[2] Sudhir Chitrapady Vishweshwara and Jalal Marhoon AL Dhali
Study of Excessive Cabin Temperatures of the Car Parked in Oman and its Mitigation
[3] I.R. Dadour, I. Almanjahie, N.D. Fowkes, K. Vijayan
Temperature variations in a parked vehicle
[4] Natural Ventilation - Wikipedia www.wikipedia.com
[5] Stake Effect Wikipedia www.wikipedia.com