The flow field uniformity in refrigerated container is one of the important factors that affect the food storage quality. Based on numerical simulation approach, three-dimensional unsteady computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of refrigerated container has been established to find the air flow characteristics in this paper. A computational fluid dynamics program FLUENT has been used to predict the unsteady air flow and temperature fields inside the refrigerated container. The air flow and temperature fields inside the refrigerated container and the effect of stacking method on the air flow and temperature fields have been discussed. The numerical result shows that the air flow and temperature distribution are very serious for the refrigerated container. And the temperature of the front and the rear portion is obviously different and that is not conducive to storage of goods. It also found that different wind speed and stacking method greatly affects temperature flow field distribution in the cabinet, and the heat transfer performance. Integrated temperature and velocity field and food storage, the reasonable air supply rate of refrigerated container is about 5 m/s. Four-piece stack is superior to the other two stacking method. Method of contrast verification was used to verify the correctness of the model in this paper. And the average deviation of experimental data and simulated result is about 1.1 ℃, which showed that the model was appropriate to the simulation of the flow distribution in refrigerated container.