Evaluation of the eddy viscosity turbulence models for the simulation of convection–radiation coupled heat transfer in indoor environment

Abstract

This paper presents a numerical evaluation of the eddy viscosity turbulence models (the zero-equation, one-equation, k-ε group and k-ω group models) in terms of CFD modelling of convection-radiation coupled heat transfer in indoor environment. The results show that all the models except the zero-equation model have acceptable accuracies to predict the bulk air temperature. However, the zero-equation and one-equation models seriously overpredict the convective heat transfer coefficient at the heater surfaces while the k-ε group models severely underpredict it, ultimately resulting in the incorrect predictions of the thermal buoyancy flows and contaminant dispersion. On the contrary, the k-ω group models perform best to calculate the convection-radiation heat split, which is critical to the successful predictions of the near-wall flow field and distribution patterns of the contaminants. This study also demonstrates the importance of simultaneously considering the convective and radiative heat transfer mechanisms when evaluating the turbulence models for indoor environment simulations.