Air curtain performance: Introducing the adapted separation efficiency

Air curtains (ACs) are plane turbulent impinging jets that used to separate two environments in terms of heat and mass transfer while still allowing traffic between these environments. The many applications ACs across a wide variety industries makes the evaluation their performance an important but difficult task. aim this paper is introduce indicator, called adapted separation efficiency, suitable for different types systems may involve AC configurations (downward blowing, upward lateral multiple jets, etc.) at scales, transported quantities (heat, water vapor, particles, gases, subjected various transport mechanisms (advection, molecular diffusion) varying environmental conditions (gradients pressure and/or density). It defined using conventional efficiency formula. principle indicator illustrated with generic case study where evaluated basic involving cross-jet density gradients, as well jet momentum fluxes. conducted based on computational fluid dynamics employing validated large eddy simulations.