A Review of CFD Analysis Methods for Personalized Ventilation (PV) in Indoor Built Environments

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is an effective analysis method of personalized ventilation (PV) in indoor built environments. As an increasingly important supplement to experimental and theoretical methods, the quality of CFD simulations must be maintained through an adequately controlled numerical modeling process. CFD numerical data can explain PV performance in terms of inhaled air quality, occupants’ thermal comfort, and building energy savings. Therefore, this paper presents state-of-the-art CFD analyses of PV systems in indoor built environments. The results emphasize the importance of accurate thermal boundary conditions for computational thermal manikins (CTMs) to properly analyze the heat exchange between human body and the microenvironment, including both convective and radiative heat exchange. CFD modeling performance is examined in terms of effectiveness of computational grids, convergence criteria, and validation methods. Additionally, indices of PV performance are suggested as system-performance evaluation criteria. A specific utilization of realistic PV air supply diffuser configurations remains a challenging task for further study. Overall, the adaptable airflow characteristics of a PV air supply provide an opportunity to achieve better thermal comfort with lower energy use based on CFD numerical analyses.