Fan: Air Conditioning of an Office by Two Fans

Air Conditioning of an Office by Two Fans (HVAC) — ANSYS Fluent CFD Simulation Training

This project simulates the performance of fan-driven airflow inside an office for HVAC operation, with the room containing one computer and four lamps. The computer is made of plastic and acts as a heat source of 700 W/m³, while each lamp is made of glass and acts as a heat source of 2500 W/m³. Two fans mounted on the upper part of two office walls drive air into the room, and the doors and windows are assumed to exchange heat with the ambient air by convection.

Methodology

The 3D geometry was created in Design Modeler. It represents a cubic space — the office — made up of several components, including people, lamps, computers, and desks. An unstructured mesh was generated in ANSYS Meshing, with finer resolution applied to the internal components of the office, for a total of 547,820 elements.

Because the fans blow air at a rapid rate, the flow is compressible, so the ideal-gas model is used to define the air. Under this model the density is not constant but varies with pressure and temperature according to the ideal-gas law. Each fan is defined in Fluent using a polynomial porous-jump condition.

Results

The goal of the study is to examine the effect of the blown airflow on the components and people in the office, as well as its influence on the heat sources in the model. The velocity and thermal performance of the two fans are clearly visible in the corresponding contours and vectors. Given the relatively small number of heat sources, the HVAC performance of the two fans appears reasonable for this large office.