CH-03-01-4 -- Interactions Between the Environment and Open Refrigerated Display Cabinets in Retail Food Stores—Design Approaches to Reduce Shopper Discomfort PDF

The cold air spillage from vertical open multideck display cabinets into the aisles of retail food stores causes discomfort to the shoppers and staff and leads to energy waste. Over the years, a number of approaches have been tried to overcome this problem with varying degrees of success. This paper reports on results of investigations into the "cold aisle effect" using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). A number of environmental control approaches and their impact on air temperature at low levels in the aisles have been investigated. The results show that underfloor heating, which is a popular method of heating large modern retail food stores, is not very effective in reducing the cold aisle effect. The paper investigates the influence of different methods of air management and heating on the cold aisle effect and proposes alternative approaches that can lead to a substantial reduction of the cold aisle effect and a reduction in the overall energy consumption of the store.

Units: SI