Evaluation of ventilation performance for indoor space

Ventilation performance depends on room geometry, ventilation method, and operating conditions as well as location and strength of the source and types of contaminants. A personal computer based application of computational fluid dynamics was developed that is capable of determining the turbulent flow field and time-dependent/steady-state contaminant concentration distributions within isothermal indoor space. The computational speed is extremely fast. The flow field calculated from this 2-D k-ε turbulence model showed good agreement with results from the commercially available FLUENT code. Ventilation performance was evaluated using the “ventilation performance index.” Effects of room configurations, operating conditions, and effective diffusion coefficient (or Peclet number) on ventilation performance were investigated.