DescriptionThis project uses ANSYS Fluent to simulate combined convective and radiative heat transfer inside a dome-shaped mosque building, applying the radiation module to capture solar heating effects. The building's indoor thermal environment is driven by solar radiation on the sidewalls, roof, and dome, along with a ground-floor heat source, making it a representative case for radiation-influenced indoor climate analysis in architectural CFD.MethodologyThe 3D geometry is built in SpaceClaim and meshed in ANSYS Meshing using an unstructured grid of 674,066 elements. Convective heat transfer at the sidewalls, roof, and dome is modeled against a surrounding ambient temperature of 309 K with a heat transfer coefficient of 10 W/m²K, while the mosque floor (20 cm thick) receives an applied heat flux of 30 W/m². Radiative heat transfer is captured using the Rosseland radiation model, suited to surfaces and materials with high absorption coefficients, with an absorption coefficient of 0.8 assumed for the building surfaces. The solar load model is used to represent the effect of incoming solar radiation. Since the focus is on internal heat transfer rather than external flow, no inlet or outlet boundary conditions are required.ConclusionResults include 2D (YZ and XZ sections through the building center) and 3D contours of temperature, pressure, and velocity, along with velocity vector fields. The temperature distribution reflects the combined effects of radiation and floor heating, while the velocity vectors reveal internal airflow circulation, with the strongest vortex forming in the dome region due to its direct exposure to solar radiation.

DescriptionThis project simulates the radiation of solar rays into the interior of a room using ANSYS Fluent, taking into account a wooden partition acting as solar shading together with a double-glazed façade. Argon gas fills the gap between the two panes of the double glazing; because argon has a low thermal conductivity, it acts as an insulating layer that reduces heat transfer from the outdoor environment into the room. Radiative heat transfer from the sun is the central physics of the study, so a radiation model is used — here the P1 model — together with the solar ray tracing feature to define the incoming solar radiation.The room is located at a latitude of 24 degrees and a longitude of 26 degrees, with the case set at 1 p.m. on the 30th of June. The directions of the sun's rays are computed from the room's geographic longitude and orientation. The glass walls adjacent to the room are defined as semi-transparent, meaning the sun's rays can be absorbed, transmitted, or reflected at these surfaces. The solar shading, by contrast, is treated as an opaque body that only absorbs and reflects the rays and does not allow them to pass through.Geometry & MeshThe model was built in 3D using Design Modeler and represents a room connected to an outdoor space through a wooden partition (solar shading) and a double-glazed façade. The room is 6 m deep, 5 m wide, and 3 m high, and the gap between the panes of the double glazing is 2 mm. Meshing was performed in ANSYS Meshing using a structured grid of 239,760 elements.MethodologySeveral assumptions underpin the simulation: a pressure-based solver is used, the simulation is steady, and gravitational effects on the fluid are neglected.Viscous model — standard k-epsilon with standard wall functionsRadiation model — P1, with the solar ray tracing solar-load modelEnergy — enabledBoundary conditions — Glass 1: stationary wall, convection thermal condition (heat transfer coefficient 20 W/m²·K, free-stream temperature 310 K), semi-transparent; Glass 2 and Glass 3: stationary walls, coupled thermal condition, semi-transparent; Wood (solar shading): stationary wall, coupled thermal condition, opaque; Room and Argon walls: stationary walls, convection thermal condition (20 W/m²·K, 310 K), opaqueMethods — SIMPLE pressure-velocity coupling; second-order for pressure; second-order upwind for density, momentum, and energy; first-order upwind for turbulent kinetic energy and dissipation rateInitialization — standard method, with 0 Pa gauge pressure, zero velocity, and a temperature of 310 KConclusionOn completion of the solution, two- and three-dimensional results for temperature, pressure, and velocity were obtained, along with velocity information on a plane through the middle of the model. The results clearly show the circulation of air within the room's interior spaces and the rise in temperature throughout the domain caused by the solar radiation.Overall, the study demonstrates how the P1 radiation model combined with solar ray tracing captures the entry of solar energy through a double-glazed, semi-transparent façade and the moderating effect of the wooden solar shading — illustrating how radiative solar loading drives the thermal behavior of a room and how shading and insulated glazing can be used to control it.

DescriptionThis project investigates how solar radiation intensity and angle vary with time of day and their effect on surface temperatures and airflow in an outdoor urban environment, simulated in ANSYS Fluent. The study is anchored to a specific real-world location — Baku, Azerbaijan — and two specific times on June 21st, 8 AM and 3 PM, chosen to contrast morning and afternoon radiation conditions at the same site on the year's longest day. The environment includes a house, trees, and ground, with soil, brick, and wood material properties assigned respectively, so that conduction through solids, convection in the surrounding air, and solar radiation are all represented simultaneously. Free airflow passes through the domain at 10 m/s and 27°C. The geometry is built in Design Modeler and meshed in ANSYS Meshing with an unstructured grid of 2,054,294 cells.MethodologyRadiation is modeled using the Discrete Ordinates (DO) model, the most comprehensive of Fluent's radiation formulations, capable of handling scattering, semi-transparent media, specular surfaces, and wavelength-dependent transitions by solving the radiative transfer equations over a finite set of discrete solid angles. Solar radiation is introduced through the Solar Ray Tracing model, with Baku's longitude, latitude, time zone, and the specific date and hour provided to the solar calculator, which derives the corresponding irradiation intensity and sun angle for each of the two time cases.AnalysisThe results include temperature and radiation heat flux contours for both the 8 AM and 3 PM cases. The maximum domain temperature rises from approximately 312 K at 8 AM to 318 K at 3 PM, a 6 K increase attributable to the higher radiation intensity and more direct sun angle later in the day. In shaded zones between the houses and under the tree canopy, however, the radiation flux received remains in the relatively narrow range of 50 to 70 W/m² across both time cases, indicating that shaded areas provide meaningful and consistent protection from the stronger afternoon solar load even as the broader environment heats up significantly.

DescriptionThis project studies solar-driven heat transfer and natural convection inside a room-and-balcony configuration using ANSYS Fluent. The balcony has a glass roof and one glass wall, and as sunlight radiates into both spaces, buoyancy-driven natural convection becomes the dominant mechanism circulating air within them, since no fans or external forcing are present to drive the flow. The geometry, comprising the room and balcony together, is built in 3D in Design Modeler and meshed in ANSYS Meshing with a structured grid of 290,250 elements.MethodologyNatural convection here arises purely from buoyancy: as sunlight warms parts of the air, that air loses density and rises, drawing in cooler, denser air to replace it, and this exchange repeats to form a self-sustaining rotating flow. Turbulence is resolved with the standard k-epsilon model, while the P1 solar ray tracing model simulates incoming sunlight and calculates the radiative heat transfer it produces inside the room. The energy equation is active to compute the resulting temperature field, and density is allowed to follow the ideal gas law so that thermally driven buoyancy is captured directly rather than assumed. Ambient air is set at 310 K with a heat transfer coefficient of 20 W/m²K, the room's walls are treated as opaque absorbers of solar radiation, and the glass walls and roof are modeled as semi-transparent, letting solar rays partially pass through into the interior.AnalysisThe results include 2D and 3D contours of velocity, temperature, and pressure, along with streamlines through both spaces. The pressure fields show clear stratification characteristic of natural convection in an enclosed volume, and notably, the pressure distribution in the room runs opposite in direction to that in the balcony, a difference traced to the glass roof: air near that glass boundary tends to stay warmer, which impedes the usual replacement of cool air by hot air and causes air to accumulate lower in the balcony than the convection pattern would otherwise predict. Temperature contours confirm the room reaches noticeably higher temperatures than the balcony, consistent with the room's opaque walls absorbing far more solar heat than the balcony's semi-transparent glass. The streamlines make the underlying convective rotation visible in both spaces, tracing directly how buoyancy-driven circulation moves air through the room and balcony.

DescriptionThis project presents a numerical simulation of natural ventilation inside an atrium building, incorporating DTRM radiation heat transfer using ANSYS Fluent. The model represents the interior of a simple atrium structure featuring three-story rooms arranged on two sides of a central atrium space.Each room includes an airflow inlet at its lower section, with a corresponding exit panel positioned on the opposite wall. Air exiting each story rises through the central atrium and ultimately escapes through an outlet panel located at the building's highest point. Various heat sources — including thermal loads and electrical equipment — are present both within the central atrium and inside each room, while the building's exterior is modeled as glass, directly exposed to solar radiation.Heat transfer in this model occurs through conduction and convection, with radiation heat transfer also incorporated into the simulation. The goal is to examine how these combined heat transfer mechanisms, along with solar radiation, influence natural ventilation and air conditioning performance within the building.The 3D geometry was built in Design Modeler, representing the atrium's central volume flanked by two three-story wings, each with its own inlet and outlet per floor. The model was meshed using ANSYS Meshing with an unstructured grid, generating 709,511 cells.DTRM MethodologyRadiation heat transfer — alongside conduction and convection — describes how all materials at a given temperature emit heat into their surroundings, and becomes especially relevant in cases involving high-temperature sources such as flames.ANSYS Fluent offers several radiation modeling approaches; this project uses the Discrete Transfer Radiation Model (DTRM), which assumes that radiation leaving a surface element within a defined range of solid angles can be approximated by a single ray.Solar Ray Tracing is also applied to capture the effect of solar radiation, requiring only the relevant solar input data for the model. The building in this simulation is oriented southwest and located in Montreal, Canada, analyzed at 1:00 PM on July 15 — data that determines the direct and diffuse irradiation levels as well as the direction of the solar rays.ConclusionThe results yield contours for temperature, pressure, velocity, and density, along with velocity vector fields. These results show that air within each room is heated by the defined floor-level heat sources. The atrium's natural ventilation system then draws this heated air out through each story's exit panel into the central atrium space, where it rises and exits through the building's upper outlet — establishing an effective, self-sustaining airflow circulation throughout the structure.

IntroductionA building's façade — the side of the structure most often in direct contact with the surrounding environment — has become a key area of focus in architectural and energy engineering, particularly regarding its effect on passive ventilation performance.Beyond giving a building its distinctive visual identity, the façade plays a critical role in overall energy performance. Its shape and configuration can vary widely, directly influencing thermal comfort and energy consumption. In fact, façade design offers engineers an opportunity to meet part of a building's energy demand through passive ventilation strategies alone.Project DescriptionThis project simulates a three-floor apartment building located in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, Australia, examining different façade configurations to identify the design that best achieves natural ventilation, optimal thermal comfort, and air changes per hour (ACH).The analysis begins by establishing the site's geographical and thermal conditions. Sydney sits at approximately 151.20° longitude and -33.865° latitude, and experiences its coldest conditions during July and August, with an average temperature of around 283 K. The modeled building spans three floors, each with an 80 m² cross-sectional area and a floor height of 2.8 m.Per the client's requirement, glass was specified as the façade material. With the dual design goals of contributing to the building's energy needs while maintaining effective natural ventilation (measured via ACH), three distinct façade configurations were developed and evaluated:Case 1: A façade extending across the full front of the building, featuring one separate inlet and outlet vent.Case 2: The façade divided into three independent sections — one per floor — each isolated from the others, with inlet and outlet vents installed on this segmented façade.Case 3: A full-extension façade similar to Case 1, but fitted with only a single inlet and a single outlet.AnalysisThe simulation results show that temperature distribution remains fairly uniform across floors in Cases 1 and 2, while Case 3 exhibits a noticeable temperature difference between floors — clearly visible in its temperature volume rendering.In terms of average building temperature, the results were 303.4 K, 305.8 K, and 293.4 K for Cases 1, 2, and 3, respectively.The façade's geometric layout and vent arrangement were also found to significantly affect ventilation behavior. Streamline data showed that reducing the number of vents helped trap warm air within the façade zone, allowing it to function as an effective insulating layer against cold ambient air.Overall, Case 2 delivered the best combination of thermal performance and ventilation efficiency, successfully meeting both design targets compared to the alternative configurations.It's worth noting that passive ventilation systems are intended to supplement — not fully replace — a building's living-condition requirements; the less favorable thermal performance observed on the first floor is therefore considered an expected trade-off rather than a design failure.

Pollution of the Street between Buildings — ANSYS Fluent CFD SimulationDescriptionMotor vehicles are a significant source of air pollution, producing carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and a range of mobile-source air toxics. The health risks associated with living close to roads are linked less to PM2.5 mass — only slightly elevated near roads — than to pollutants such as ultrafine particles, carbon monoxide, NO₂, black carbon, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are markedly higher near traffic. This project uses ANSYS Fluent to simulate pollution in a street placed between two buildings. Within the Urban Microclimate: All Levels CFD Training Package, this project extends pollutant dispersion to a realistic street configuration with buildings of differing size, building on the idealized canyon toward more representative urban layouts.MethodologyThe geometry is a 3D rectangular domain measuring 40 m × 20 m × 25 m in the X, Y, and Z directions, containing two buildings: the first 3 m × 3 m × 15 m and the second 3 m × 10 m × 15 m in the X, Y, and Z directions. The geometry is created in Design Modeler, and ANSYS Meshing generates 274,496 structured elements. The simulation is steady and uses a pressure-based solver, appropriate for the incompressible working fluid, with gravitational acceleration included at 9.81 m/s² in the negative Y direction. The Species Transport model is used to solve for the pollution rising from the street.AnalysisAt the end of the solution, two-dimensional contours of pressure, velocity, and the volume fractions of pollution and air are obtained, with the contours viewable at intervals through the solution. The static pressure is high on the left (windward) side of the buildings, while the velocity rises as the flow passes over their tops; the pollutant volume fraction tends toward the left building side, carried by the airflow moving between the buildings. The average static pressure at the inlet is plotted as a convergence criterion. By the end of this project, you'll be able to set up a steady Species Transport simulation of traffic pollution between buildings, account for gravity in the dispersion, and interpret the pressure, velocity, and pollutant-fraction fields around a real street configuration.

Air Pollution within a Street Canyon — ANSYS Fluent CFD SimulationDescriptionThis project simulates pollution diffusion in a street canyon using ANSYS Fluent. When two rows of building blocks stand parallel to each other, the space between them forms what is known as a street canyon (or urban canyon) — a configuration whose geometry strongly influences how urban heat and airborne gases are distributed. This project investigates the amount and distribution of pollutants within that canyon space. Within the Urban Microclimate: All Levels CFD Training Package, this project introduces pollutant dispersion through the classic street-canyon geometry, applying the Species Transport model to the fundamental unit problem of urban air quality.MethodologyThe three-dimensional model is designed in Design Modeler, with a computational area 36 m long, 24 m wide, and 8 m high containing two rows of simple building blocks parallel to each other. To reduce computational cost, the model is limited in extent and symmetry boundary conditions are applied around the urban area. Meshing in ANSYS Meshing produces 1,938,659 elements. The Species Transport model is used to represent the two gaseous species — air and pollutant — where the pollutant has a specific heat capacity of 1100 J/kg·K and a molecular weight of 77.49064 kg/kmol, and air has 1006.43 J/kg·K and 28.966 kg/kmol. All pollutants are assumed to be generated within the canyon: two grooves in the ground act as the pollution source, with a source term of 0.011 kg/m³·s. Initially only air fills the domain, and pollutants then begin to be produced. At the inlet, pure airflow enters through a velocity-inlet condition whose magnitude varies with the inlet location — implemented as a profile in UDF format — with the air temperature set to 300 K. The RNG k-epsilon model and the energy equation are enabled to resolve the turbulent flow and the temperature field.AnalysisAt the end of the solution, three-dimensional contours of pressure gradient, velocity, temperature gradient, air mass fraction, and pollutant mass fraction are obtained, along with two-dimensional contours of velocity, air mass fraction, and pollutant mass fraction. The results show air pollution originating from the interior of the street canyon, and the two- and three-dimensional velocity vectors reveal a vortex — a rotation of the flow — forming inside the canyon, which governs how the pollutant is trapped or cleared. By the end of this project, you'll be able to set up a Species Transport simulation with a ground-level pollution source, apply a UDF velocity profile at the inlet, and interpret the concentration and velocity fields that characterize air quality in a street canyon.

Urban Heat Island (UHI) CFD Simulation on a Real Urban Zone, ANSYS Fluent TrainingDescriptionThis project simulates airflow and heat transfer over a real urban area — the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) campus in Auckland, New Zealand — to study the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect using ANSYS Fluent.Urban heat island and pedestrian comfort are central concerns in urban planning. As cities grow denser and taller, buildings reshape local wind patterns and trap heat, creating uncomfortable or even unsafe conditions at street level. CFD lets planners predict wind speed and temperature around a real building layout while the design is still on the drawing board, so problem areas can be identified and fixed before anything is built.The study has two goals: to map pedestrian wind comfort and flag locations where wind speed exceeds 3.8 m/s, and to check outdoor thermal comfort, where the aim is to keep the campus area below 295 K.The real building footprints were extracted from Google Earth Pro, and the corresponding geometry and building volumes were reconstructed in ANSYS Design Modeler as a main domain (the campus itself) surrounded by a larger subdomain that captures the incoming wind.Simulation MethodologyThe analysis is carried out in two parts: wind comfort and thermal comfort.For the wind-comfort study, note that Auckland's airflow is predominantly from the southwest, shifting toward the northeast in summer as the high-pressure belt moves south, and that coastal areas are consistently windier than sheltered inland ones. Using representative wind conditions for the site, the model resolves the wind field around the buildings and evaluates it against standard pedestrian wind-comfort criteria.For the thermal-comfort study, solar loading is applied with the Discrete Ordinates (DO) radiation model, set from the site's geographic coordinates for mid-February at 1 p.m. The building surfaces are assigned a representative heat flux, the ground surface is fixed at 286.15 K, and the incoming free-stream air is set to 288.15 K, based on local meteorological data. Together these drive the temperature field that forms the urban heat island.Results & ConclusionThe velocity contours show that buildings directly exposed to the wind experience speeds up to about 30 km/h (≈ 8.3 m/s) at some points, well above the pedestrian-comfort limit. As the air moves into the passages between buildings it slows to around 10 km/h (≈ 2.8 m/s), which is comfortable, and it is damped further in the rear rows of buildings.On the thermal side, the incident solar radiation over the domain ranges from about 1560 to 1700 W/m²; taller buildings absorb more, while the passages between them receive less because of shading. Temperature contours were extracted at several heights above the ground: at 0.5 m the average is about 287.46 K with a local peak of 295.77 K, at 1 m the average rises to 287.96 K (peak 292.58 K), at 1.5 m the field changes little, and at 2 m the peak reaches 294.87 K. The warm zones between buildings come from heat rejected by the surrounding surfaces — the signature of the urban heat island — and one low but wide building (the meeting hall) cools more slowly and holds the highest roof temperatures.Overall, the wind-comfort criterion is exceeded in several exposed areas, particularly toward the suburbs, so the study points to mitigations such as windbreaks or added vegetation and greater spacing between closely packed buildings to avoid narrow, high-speed street canyons. The thermal-comfort target of 295 K is met across almost the entire campus at pedestrian height, with only a small, localized area reaching it, so heat is not expected to cause meaningful hardship for people using the campus.