CFD Study of An Office Room Equipped with Corner Impinging Jet Ventilation

Abstract: A CFD validation study was made using corner supplied impinging jet ventilation operating in cooling mode. The air distribution system has two equilateral triangle shaped inlets placed 80cm above the floor at the two that share a common wall. The supply air was introduced at 2.26m/s. The temperature of the supply air at one of the inlets was slightly higher than the other. The room air velocity and temperature profiles were studied using realizable k-e, RNG k-e, k-e SST and v2-f turbulence models and compared with experimental values. Generally, the agreement between the experimental measurement data of the room air temperatures and velocities and the CFD results was very good in all turbulence models. However, the RNG k-e turbulence model showed better correlation with average errors of 1.9% and 2.8% in predicting temperature and velocity respectively. Possibility of local thermal discomfort with the indoor air were investigated using the Fanger’s thermal comfort indices and draught rate while the air quality was evaluated by the mean age of air and the diffusion coefficient. The thermal comfort indices were computed using a user-defined function and the mean age of air was computed by user- defined scalar that solves a partial differential equation that uses the source diffusivity and calculate the residence time of air in the room. The results show that there is a higher risk of draft at the ankle level (close to 20%) and the room air is freshest near the lower region at the centre of the room. The room air is oldest at the region close to the ceiling in the area between the two mannequins. The study concludes that a satisfactory prediction of thermal stratification and velocity fields can made for evaluating the indoor thermal comfort and air quality using RANS based turbulence models.