Abstract
Ceiling fans have been used for decades as a means of providing thermal comfort in tropical countries such as India. However, recent years have witnessed a significant increase in the use of air conditioning as a means to achieve comfort, and therefore in the total energy consumption and related CO2 emissions. Ceiling fans are still viable options to limit use of air conditioners or in combination with air conditioners without compromising on thermal comfort and still achieving energy savings. Ceiling fans generate non-uniform velocity profiles, and therefore relatively non-uniform thermal environments, whose characteristics may be tough to analyse with simple modelling methods. This issue can be investigated using CFD. However, to date, there are few works on ceiling fans, CFD and thermal comfort. More accurate models are therefore required to predict their performance. The research presented in this paper aimed to develop and validate a three-dimensional transient implicit CFD model of a typical ceiling fan available in India by comparing simulation results obtained using different URANS turbulence models with measured data collected in controlled environment. The results highlight that this ceiling fan model is able to replicate the predominant characteristics of the air flow generated by the fan such as the meandering plume and the local fine free shear layers. The best results are achieved when the SST k-ω turbulence model is used, with 83% of the simulated values being within the error bars of the respective measured value.
Highlights
Ceiling fans have been used for decades as a means of providing thermal comfort in tropical climates
This paper presents research findings on a transient threedimensional CFD implicit model of a ceiling fan
The research question was whether a simple implicit model, that combines accuracy with efficient computation, can be used for accurate thermal comfort studies
Summary
Ceiling fans have been used for decades as a means of providing thermal comfort in tropical climates. In the event of growing economy and rising percentage of population which can afford purchase and operation of air conditioner for higher want of thermal comfort India has experienced rise in sales of air conditioners [3]. Cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, having Cooling degree days in range of 3000 and 3500, are replacing fans with air conditioners despite possibility of use of fan during certain part of year. Unless the use of energy-intensive air conditioning is limited only to periods of extremely hot weather, overall Indian energy consumption and related CO2 emissions will significantly increase, leading to severe implications for the global climate and challenging the reliability of the Indian electricity grid
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