Development of adaptive coarse grid generation methods for fast fluid dynamics in simulating indoor airflow

Abstract

The control of indoor air quality and thermal comfort requires faster-than-real-time simulations of air distribution. One approach to achieve such simulations is to use coarse grid. This study developed two adaptive coarse grid generation methods by analysing the grid-related truncation errors in the solution of the Navier–Stokes equations by fast fluid dynamics (FFD). Method 1 generates a grid that is coarser than that for a grid-independent solution but can still provide accurate FFD predictions. Method 2 generates a very coarse grid that provides acceptable FFD predictions. This study assessed the performance of the developed methods by using them to simulate three typical indoor airflows. The assessment showed that the coarse grid generated by Method 1 accelerated the FFD simulation by at least two to five times, with similar computational accuracy. The coarse grid generated by Method 2 provided faster-than-real-time FFD simulations for the cases tested in this study.