Analysis for determining the impact of air quality and thermal comfort in an enclosed cavity

Abstract

Quality of the indoor environment has been in the focus of many researchers since decades. People spend about 80–90% of the total time within buildings which may be an office, house, gymnasium, etc. So, there is a need to check the environmental conditions on the basis of thermal comfort as well as the condition of indoor air. Although, condition of air and thermal comfort are considered to be interdependent, as if the quality of air is not good, it will result in uncomfortable dwelling conditions and vice-versa. Many researchers have tried to evaluate the thermal comfort and quality of indoor air theoretically with the help of the thermal sensation scale as per the Fanger model. Although, a limited simulation work is published describing the effect of airflow generated from the ceiling fan on the quality of indoor air in the building envelope. This communication is an attempt to examine the impact of indoor air quality by considering the influence of temperature, velocity and humidity level of air, inside an enclosed cavity for a specific location. This work involves the use of an SST k-ω based turbulence model in order to study the turbulent behavior of airflow generated by ceiling fan. The radiation model has been considered in order to study the temperature variation inside the cavity. It also incorporates the evaluation of relative humidity and PMV-PPD inside the enclosed cavity for attaining comfortable dwelling conditions. Investigation revealed the average predicted mean vote value to be −0.89, which can be considered as an ideal condition for comfortable dwelling.