USE OF COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMIC TO PREDICT AIRFLOW AND TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION IN A RESIDENTIAL BUILDING WITH AN UNDER FLOOR AIR DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM

Abstract

Our objective is to demonstrate the use of Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) in building applications. In particular, CFD has been used for temperature and airflow predictions of building spaces conditioned using Under Floor Air Distribution (UFAD) System. The space used is an instrumented laboratory room (old daycare center) located at the University of Wyoming. The use of the CFD simulation results provides insightful analyses of the UFAD design and diffuser locations. The k-ε turbulent model was employed to simulate the environment above an Under-Floor Air Distribution (UFAD) system, where the air is supplied using different configurations of several diffuser locations. Mesh generation was conducted using a pre-processor program, called GAMBIT. The CFD results were obtained using the program FLUENT and show flow and thermal patterns, using temperature and heat flux boundary conditions obtained experimentally. These boundary conditions have been used to predict the nature of convection heat transfer through studying velocity and temperature patterns. A realistic three dimensional model of the UFAD system is used for the simulation.