Title:CFD Investigation of Air Flow Patterns and Thermal Comfort in a Room with Diverse Heating Systems
VOLUME: 6 ISSUE: 2
Author(s):Mohammed Sobhi and Essam E. Khalil*
Affiliation:Madina Higher Institute for Engineering and Technology, Cairo, Cairo University, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo
Keywords:Air flow, CFD, convection, heating, radiation, room, thermal comfort.
Abstract:
Objective: The main focus in the current work is to investigate how diverse
heating systems and their locations influence the indoor thermal environment in an exhaust-
ventilated room.
Methods: Four systems for heating the room were used in the current study, in which,
heat was transferred by convection and radiation. The four systems were: wall and floor
heating at low temperatures, Medium Temperature Radiator (M.T. radiator) heating and
High Temperature Radiator (H.T. radiator). Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation
was used to investigate indoor temperature, vertical air temperature gradient and
thermal comfort for each case. The ventilation rate was set to be 6 air changes per hour
(ACH) entering the room through a vent over the window.
Results: The findings from the current work were that the low temperature heating systems
had better temperature distributions with lower vertical Air Temperature Differences
compared to high and medium temperature radiator systems.
Conclusion: The Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and the predicted percentage of dissatisfied
(PPD) based on Fanger’s model were calculated for all cases, and were found to be
in the recommended ranges.