Heater Applied for a Room HVAC

Description

Room heating via wall-mounted radiators is a classic application within the heat transfer engineering field, involving the coupled effects of conduction through building materials, natural convection driven by buoyancy, and conjugate heat exchange between a solid heat source and surrounding air. This project uses ANSYS Fluent to model heat transfer from a radiator mounted on a room sidewall, where the heater acts as a heat source with a constant heat flux of 1886.792 W/m². The sidewalls and ceiling are modeled as 0.2 m thick wood, exchanging heat with the outdoor environment through convection at an ambient temperature of 280 K and a heat transfer coefficient of 10 W/m²·K. Since the study centers on natural convection and buoyancy-driven circulation within the room, gravity is included in the simulation setup.

Methodology

The three-dimensional room geometry is built in SpaceClaim, and the domain is discretized in ANSYS Meshing using a structured grid of 87,865 elements. The energy equation is enabled to resolve conjugate heat transfer between the solid heater and the room air, allowing the simulation to capture how heat conducted through the radiator surface drives buoyancy-induced air circulation throughout the enclosed space.

Results Analysis

Post-processing generates both two-dimensional and three-dimensional contours of velocity, temperature, and pressure, supplemented by pathlines and velocity vectors that trace the air movement within the room. The results show that the radiator raises the overall room air temperature, with the most pronounced heating and velocity increases occurring near the walls, particularly in the region immediately surrounding the heater, reflecting the expected buoyancy-driven flow pattern rising from the heat source.