Indoor cooling/heating load analysis based on coupled simulation of convection, radiation and HVAC control

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation for analyzing indoor cooling/heating load is presented in this study. It is coupled with a radiative heat transfer simulation and heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) controlling system in a room. This new method feeds back the outputs of the HVAC system control to the input boundary conditions of the CFD, and this method includes a human model to evaluate the thermal environment. It would be used to analyze the heating/cooling loads of different HVAC systems under the condition of the same human thermal sensation (e.g. PMV, operative temperature, etc.) even though the temperature and air-velocity distribution in the room are different from each other. To examine the performance of the new method, a cooling load and a thermal environment within a semi-enclosed space, which opens into an atrium space, is analyzed under the steady-state conditions during the summer season. This method is able to analyze the indoor cooling load with changes of target thermal environments of a room and/or changing clothing conditions of occupants considering the temperature and air-velocity distribution in the room. In this paper, two types of HVAC system are compared; i.e. radiation-panel system and all-air cooling system. The radiation-panel cooling system is found to be more energy efficient for cooling the semi-enclosed space. Changes of the level of thermal environment reduce cooling load effectively in case of the all-air cooling system while the radiation-panel system does not reduce cooling load even though the targeted thermal condition is relaxed. Energy saving effect is expected by easing the clothing conditions of occupants. In this study, the reducing effect of cooling load is quantitatively evaluated with clothing conditions also. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.