Computational fluid dynamics evaluation of the furniture arrangement for ventilation efficiency

Abstract

People spend most of their time indoors; therefore, maintaining a good indoor air quality and meeting the requirements of comfort and energy efficiency are essential. One of the most widespread strategies to achieve this objective is improving ventilation efficiency; therefore, the main aim of this study was to show an optimization of the ventilation efficiency, in a specific room, considering 47 variations (case studies) in the furniture arrangement. For this purpose, a numerical analysis using computational fluid dynamics techniques, validated by the tracer gas decay technique, was used to assess the distribution of the age of air within the space. The concept of “age of air” was implemented in the computational fluid dynamics code through user-defined functions, using the steady-state method based on the resolution of a transport equation for an additional scalar. Variations up to 5.75% in the ventilation efficiency between the cases studied have been achieved. It is concluded that an improvement up to 1.65% can be obtained when the elements of the study are introduced in a way that facilitates the air movement towards the exhaust; therefore, improvement of the ventilation efficiency through specific furniture distributions is possible, although not significant, according to the outcomes.