Abstract
The general consensus among academics is that the spatio-temporal humidity distribution is more or less uniform in an indoor space. This has, for the large part, not yet been proven by an academic study; subsequently, this paper aims to demonstrate that this is not always true. The paper makes use of a validated transient CFD model, which uses the Low Reynolds Number k-ϵ turbulence model. The model simulates people in a room at a constant skin temperature and emitting a constant source of humidity using source terms in the species equation. The model is eventually used to predict the implications of having a high source of humidity, in the form of occupancy, on the micro-climate’s spatio-temporal humidity distribution. The results for the high-occupancy case show that different locations experience various amounts of humid air, with a 31% difference between the lowest and highest locations. The amount of water vapor in each person’s proximity is deemed to be highly dependent on the flow of the inlet jet, with the people farthest from the jet having an overall less mass of water vapor in their proximity over the two-hour experimental period. This paper has concluded that there are, in fact, cases where the humidity non-uniformity inside an interior environment becomes substantial in situations of high occupancy. The results of this paper may be useful to improve the design of HVAC systems.
Highlights
IntroductionEnjoying comfortable interior spaces has, in the past couple of decades, been given high importance, both by lay people in general and by academics
This paper has described the methodology that was used to carry out humidityrelated experiments in a test chamber and the subsequent modeling using a validated predictive Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tool
Contrary to the general consensus that humidity distribution inside an interior living space is practically uniform, this study has shown that there may be cases where the spatio-temporal distribution of humidity varies considerably inside a room, as shown in this case of high humidity
Summary
Enjoying comfortable interior spaces has, in the past couple of decades, been given high importance, both by lay people in general and by academics This can be observed in the vast amount of literature related to thermal comfort that has been produced. Li et al [7], who experimentally studied the effects of a high-humidity climate on people living in hot and humid environments, state that, even though research on thermal comfort is wide and deep, studies related to the identification of the effect of relative humidity (RH) on thermal comfort is in its infancy This is true when considering localized micro-climatic characteristics of humidity in indoor spaces. This study shall not concentrate on the thermal comfort aspect but on the physics of the spatio-temporal distribution of humidity in an internal environment
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