Analysis of Room Airflow Characteristics Using CFD Approach
Authors :- Parthkumar Patel, Ravikumar Karmur, Gautam Choubey, Sumit Tripathi
Publication :- Recent Trends in Fluid Dynamics Research. Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Singapore. (2022): pp 15-24.
Air conditioners have become an important part of our lives and are widely used in commercial buildings, residential houses, shopping centres and various industries for better thermal comfort and indoor air quality. Room airflow characteristics and locations of ventilation passages play an important role in giving better thermal comfort. In this work, a study has been conducted on the overall effectiveness of air ventilation systems inside a room. A CFD simulation is performed on a 2D horizontal section of a room using Ansys Fluent, which is integrated into Ansys Workbench. For numerical solution of the equations, SIMPLE algorithms are opted for pressure-based solver, while for turbulence modelling, RANS equations are adopted with RNG k-e mathematical model for simulation of the domain. The simulations are performed for two cases: cross-ventilation and corner-ventilation arrangements. The main goal of this study is to determine the temperature and velocity distributions in the room. The effects of humidity are not considered in this work. The results of the study are presented in terms of overall performance of the two ventilation systems through transient simulations. It is observed that a cross-ventilation system gives better