CFD Case Study Evaluating Natural Ventilation Usage

Considering Human Comfort and Energy Efficiency

Jonathan Albert
Faculty of Engineering, Science and Technology
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Victoria
[email protected]

Abstract—Due to greater awareness of the environmental energy efficiency, while maintaining thermal comfort of the
impact and cost of fossil-based energy, this study provides occupants. Natural ventilation modelling using CFD has
information regarding different ventilation strategies’ impact on recently become more accepted in research, with Zhai showing
indoor environment’s energy consumption and comfort. A case the accuracy of results increasing using effective turbulence
study comparison between Air-Conditioning (AC) usage and
Natural Ventilation (NV) is completed on a typical single-story
modelling [2]. The CFD tool can also be used to model
office building located in Victoria, Australia. An office design is contaminant transport and pollution distribution [5]. Overall it
modelled using Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) model. Finite can be observed that a CAD and CFD are tools that can be used
control volume method of the office building is developed using to model a variety of indoor environment phenomena.
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) with a conventional
Eulerian approach. Solidworks Flow Simulation numerically II. BACKGROUND LITERATURE
solves the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations. To provide greater context to the results of this study,
Calculations are undertaken considering heat sources within the fundamental principles of natural ventilation and CFD will be
office, including workers, computers and lighting and ventilation
explained in this section.
openings detailed in this study are Louvre style windows. Human
comfort is evaluated through performance indicators such as A. Natural Ventilation
Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied people (PPD), Predicted
Mean Vote (PMV) and Draft Risk (Draft Rate {DR}). The CFD
The velocity field is important to thermal comfort. In a
solver yielded grid independent results from Semi-Implicit typical winter season, a low temperature velocity field (cool
Method for Pressure Linked Equations (SIMPLE) type scheme, draft) is a cause of discomfort. In a typical summer season,
where PPD results show natural ventilation through Louvre velocity fields can be desirable as they provide a cooling effect.
windows producing a comfortable indoor environment at no Air temperature impacts comfort and is dependent on the
environmental or financial cost. sources of heat contained in the indoor environment, as well as
the ambient environment of the system being analysed [3].
Keywords— Natural Ventilation; CFD; Cooling; Windows; Controlling natural ventilation is to control the size of the
HVAC
openings in the building.

I. INTRODUCTION B. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)

Businesses are looking for ways to create a comfortable and CFD is the analysis of systems involving fluid flow, heat
energy efficient work space. One fundamental method of transfer and associated phenomena such as chemical reactions
creating a thermally comfortable environment whilst reducing by means of computer-based simulations. It can be used to
energy usage is through using natural ventilation. Natural analyse the flow in and around buildings where
ventilation is a means of replacing air in an indoor environment experimentation of such phenomena is difficult and expensive
with outdoor air, improving air quality without the air flow to perform accurately [5].
being driven by a mechanical force. By designing the A limitation in using this procedure in the context of living
ventilation of living spaces within these buildings, the usage of spaces is that areas around buildings are defined by a site plan.
the mechanical cooling systems may decrease, resulting in Since a site plan is on a significantly larger scale to that of a
financial gains as well as becoming more environmentally single room or building, this creates large number of numerical
sustainable [1]. grids required to perform the CFD, resulting in a large
Experimentation can explain the effects of natural computational cost.
ventilation, this set up however is expensive [1]. A cheaper To minimise the number of grids, decoupling the indoor and
alternative to modelling natural ventilation in buildings is outdoor airflow simulation should be used as shown by Zhai.
through using CFD. This means that the outdoor airflow is predicted, which can then
The focus of this paper is to address the cooling effect of provide airflow and pressure information at the openings of
wind at Louvre openings in an indoor environment. To remove buildings [6]. Using the predicted information as boundary
heat in summer conditions, the optimisation of natural conditions, the CFD is completed.
ventilation can contribute to reaching the goal of improving
 III. METHODOLOGY the importance of accurate boundary conditions and as such the
boundary conditions used in this study are set-up like this.
A. Theoretical Modelling They however have been adjusted to account for common
The purpose of using CFD is to solve algebraic equations weather occurrences in Victorian offices. They are summarised
by discretising the indoor environment and using the partial in Table 1.
differential equations that describe the flow. In this study, the
TABLE 1. SAMPLE BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
solver being used is ‘Solidworks Flow Simulation’. This
method uses the ‘finite volume method’ of discretising the fluid Boundary Conditions for the CFD Model
domain, whereby the model is divided into finite control Boundary Type Heat Mass and
volumes. At the centre of the finite control volume, a central Transfer Momentum
node is analysed numerically with the use of specified boundary Internal Walls Wall Adiabatic No Slip Wall
conditions. Workers Body Q=100W No Slip Wall

𝜕𝜌 𝜕 Computer Wall Q=30W No Slip Wall

+ (𝜌𝑢𝑖 ) = 0 (1)
𝜕𝑡 𝜕𝑥𝑖 Tables and Chairs Wall Adiabatic No Slip Wall

Room Floor Wall Adiabatic No Slip Wall

The mass conservation equation is solved by the software
using the equation above, where 𝜌 represents the fluid density, Window Opening T=30°C Pabs=101325 Pa
t is the time, 𝑢𝑖 is the velocity. AC Vent Inlet T=15°C 𝑚̇=0.98kg/s
The software describes the Navier-Stokes Momentum
Room Ceiling Wall Adiabatic No Slip Wall
Equation as shown below:
Lights Wall Q=60W No Slip Wall
𝜕𝜌𝑢𝑖 𝜕 𝜕𝑝 𝜕
+ (𝜌𝑢𝑖 𝑢𝑗 ) + = (𝜏 ) + 𝜌𝑔𝑖 + 𝐹 (2)
𝜕𝑡 𝜕𝑥𝑗 𝜕𝑥𝑖 𝜕𝑥𝑗 𝑖𝑗 C. Model Design
In this study, a typical office room is modelled. Its internal
Where p is static pressure, 𝜏𝑖𝑗 is the viscous shear stress dimensions are 10m long, 5m wide and 2.7m high. There are
tensor, g is acceleration due to gravity and F is the external six workers working at desks, three on each side of the room.
force. The viscous shear stress tensor is shown below. Lights, computers and people are heat sources. Previous studies
by Topp show that precise and accurate CAD models do not
𝜕𝑢𝑖 𝜕𝑢𝑗 2 𝜕𝑢𝑘 influence the solution of the flow inside an indoor environment,
𝜏𝑖𝑗 = 𝜇𝑡 ( + − 𝛿 ) (3) but does influence the computational cost. It is also explained
𝜕𝑥𝑗 𝜕𝑥𝑖 3 𝑖𝑗 𝜕𝑥𝑘
that the detail of the features of the living space, such as the
Where 𝛿𝑖𝑗 is the Kronecker delta function (it is equal to unity geometry of people and equipment, do not overly affect the
flow [7]. Perez does not consider the effects of people within
when i = j, and zero otherwise)
the building, but does provide comparable natural ventilation
data to a living space. Consequently, this model will be
Human comfort can then be measured once the flow field is
developed comparably to previous studies to compare data and
solved. A performance indicator such as PPD can be used,
to effectively measure energy and comfort parameters.
which mathematically represents the thermal discomfort felt by
Louvre style windows have been modelled assuming airflow
people in indoor environments.
to be normal to a side of a face of the office building. The human
4 −0.2179𝑃𝑀𝑉 2 ) model has been developed from a simplified version of a 95 th
𝑃𝑃𝐷 = 100 − 𝑒 (−0.03353𝑃𝑀𝑉 (4) percentile seated person. Lighting and computers have been
approximated to simplify the geometry.
Where PMV is an index that describes the heat balance of a
human body, normalised to a 7-point scale, of integers from -3 Lights
to 3, including 0. Thermal balance in this model is where AC In
internal heat production of the person’s body equals the loss of Computers
heat to the environment. This scale is commonly used to
Workers
evaluate human comfort, and is critical to satisfying the
requirements of the ventilation strategy [3].
B. Boundary Conditions
Boundary conditions are implemented to solve the flow. As
an example, one case of boundary conditions is shown below. Windows
It is important to develop a model that closely simulates a
common office space. Hadjukiewicz, Geron and Keane detail Desks and Chairs

Fig. 1. Model Office Concept Isometric View

 In Fig. 1. simplified equipment and human models are used.
The model contains 6 workers, 6 computers, 5 celling lights, 10 Simulated PPD with Air Conditioning
individual Louvre windows and air conditioning vents. 7.5

D. Computational Mesh

PPD [%]
6.5

6
Case A
Case B
5.5 Case C

5
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Room Length [m]

Fig. 4. Simulated Indoor Air Temperatures with Air- Conditioning

Simulated PPD with AC vs NV

Fig. 2. Model Office Mesh Isometric View 8
7

TABLE 2. GRID SIZES AND INDEPENDENCE TESTS 6

5

PPD [%]
Grid Size and Independence Tests
4
Mean Temperature Mean Velocity
Case Number of Cells 3
Independency Independency
A 52825 2.7% 1.1% 2 PPD with NV
2.1% 0.6% 1 PPD with AC
B 110539
0
C 184578 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Room Length [m]

Shown above, Fig. 2. is an illustration of the mesh generated Fig. 5. Simulated PPD With Air Conditioning Vs. Natural Ventilation
by the software. The mesh was completed 3 times at different
levels of refinement to minimise the computational cost
incurred. Table 2. summarises the grid independency test
results, which show the variation in flow results in relation to
the finest mesh. This showed that the lowest acceptable
computation time required to solve the flow is Case A - 52855
cells, as increasing mesh to Case B – 110539 cells and finally
Case C - 184,578 would not change the results of the flow field
by more than 3%. An illustration the mesh structure, showing
the discretisation of the native CAD model is shown in Fig. 2.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Simulated Temperature with Air Conditioning Fig. 6. Temperature Cut Plot of Air-Conditioned Office

19.5

Case A
Air Temperature (°C)

19 Case B
Case C

18.5

18

17.5
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Room Length (m)
Fig. 7. Temperature Cut Plot of Naturally Ventilated Office
Fig. 3. Simulated Indoor Air Temperatures with Air -Conditioning
 V. CONCLUSION
Ventilation and air-conditioning performance in an
Australian (Victorian) office space was investigated in this
paper using Solidworks Flow Simulation to numerically solves
the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations describing the
flow field in the indoor environment. A standard air-
conditioning unit and cross-ventilation strategy through typical
Louvre windows were investigated. This revealed that human
comfort standards can be met through the opening of Louvre
Fig. 8. Velocity Vector Cut Plot of Air-Conditioned Office style windows during conditions of a typical Victorian summer
day. The results and data analysis support that the conditions
inside this natural ventilation scenario are satisfactory to
ASHRAE 55-2010 standards for Thermal Environmental
Conditions for Human Occupancy.
The data provided from the CFD has been completed with
similar methodology to Mora-Perez and Bangalee, with grid
independence showing a reliable convergence with acceptable
computational cost with a different RANS solver. The shortfall
in convective heat transfer provided by natural ventilation is
offset by the increase in air motion inside the building, and is
Fig. 9. Velocity Vector Cut Plot of Naturally Ventilated Office revealed in positive PPD values similar to modelling completed
by López-Jiménez. This results in up to a 26% reduction in
annual energy usage.
Fig. 3. and Fig. 4. describe grid independency of two key In accordance with ASHRAE 55-2010 standard, issues of
variables, mean temperature and PPD. Summarised in Table 2, acoustics due to the usage of natural ventilation has not been
the variance in both mean temperature and PPD as a result of 3 considered. This paper creates groundwork for future studies to
different mesh sizes in the case of an air-conditioned office do address this issue.
not significantly change results and the data is similar to Geron
and Keane’s study of natural ventilation. This study hence
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
implements a coarser grid option due to computational time
limitations. I would like to thank Dr. Jamal Naser and Dr. Kenneth Igbo
Values of simulated PPD when comparing natural ventilation for their support and guidance in completing this project.
(NV) and air conditioning (AC) shown in fig. 5. show that both
roughly result in a maximum of 6.94% dissatisfaction. In REFERENCES
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