The data assimilation of volumetric velocity and temperature data to extract boundary conditions for high-fidelity simulation of the indoor air

Abstract

The contemporary challenge of the air conditioning sector is to continuously improve the provided comfort conditions while reducing the energy consumption of the devices. This necessity can only be satisfied by improving research and design methods. Therefore, on the one hand, researchers worldwide develop and utilize experimental methods for more accurate measurements. On the other hand, researchers develop numerical methods to investigate design iterations effectively and quickly.The main idea of this study is to create a novel data assimilation method to utilize all the advantages of experimental and numerical methods to develop a high-fidelity investigation method of an indoor air model.In the present study, the three-dimensional velocity distribution at the split air conditioning indoor unit's outlet section was measured by using the Stereo Particle Image Velocity Measurement method. The temperature distribution at the outlet section of the split air conditioning indoor unit was also determined using the Meshed Infrared Thermography method. The data from these experimental measurements were assimilated to generate a highly realistic boundary condition of the steady-state and time-dependent Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models. This is achieved for the first time in the literature.The results of these analyses compared with conventional CFD and the aforementioned experimental methods. The study's results show that the novel data assimilation approach (3.13% average error) is significantly more accurate than the traditional average boundary condition approach (13.19% average error).