Numerical approximation of air flow, temperature distribution and thermal comfort in buildings

Abstract

Thermal comfort is associated to air flow and temperature distributions in the ventilation system or air conditioning space. In this work, the principal goal is the analyzing of air flow,thermal comfort and the distribution of temperature in the chamber, using a commercial computational fluid dynamics package (ANSYS CFX 15). Calculations are performed in an empty chamber without any human or mechanical activity and the numerical results are compared and validated with measurement points. The comfort level was evaluated using the Air Diffusion PerformanceIndex, ADPI. The numerical results demonstrated that the simulations could precisely predict the temperature and air flow distribution in chamber space. Due the buoyancy effect,the air circulation and air velocity are maintained at high values and the temperature of 19 °C with velocity of 0.15 m.s − 1 gives the best EDT (Effective draft temperature) satisfy ASHRAE 55–210 criteria that V ≤ 0.35 m.s − 1 and Effective draft temperature ranges between -1.7 and 1.1.

Keywords

• Thermal
• Comfort
• Heat transfer
• Building
• Cfd