The Analysis of the Impact of Building Openings Design Variations on Thermal Comfort and Airflow Velocity by using CFD Simulation

Abstract

Thermal comfort is very important to support a building’s user productivity. This study was conducted to investigate thermal comfort and airflow velocity in the engineering laboratory building at the State University of Malang.Preliminary observations have shown that the average room air temperature was around 27 - 31°C, which caused the uncomfortable condition. Thermal comfort enhancement in this study is investigated by applying several variations and treatments to existing openings. By using descriptive quantitative and experimental methods, the analysis uses the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation method with the ANSYS Workbench 19.0 Program. The simulation was applied to seven rooms with various types of openings. Parameters used in the simulation process are: 1) room geometry data consisting of images, room area, and location of ventilation openings, and 2) measurement reference points such as airflow velocity and room temperature. The dimensions of the openings will be observed by varying the treatment in each room, namely by opening all the inlets in the room (S), opening the inlets on the air vents only (J), and opening the inlets on the windows only (V). Primary data in the form of room temperature, airflow velocity, relative humidity, and physical dimensions of buildings are obtained through direct observation. The simulation results show that the maximum airflow velocity of the rooms (0.34 m/s) is found in the largest dimension variation of the inlet area of the opening (13.15 m2). The lowest temperature is found in the rooms with the smallest dimension of inlet (28oC) with the value of room temperature in the range of 27.5oC – 30.2°C. The statistical analysis of one-way ANOVA shows that by using a significance level of 0.05, there is an effect of variations in the design of openings on the level of thermal comfort in each room.