Effects of Ventilation on Human Thermal Comfort in Rooms

Nowadays, the majority of people spend up to 90% of their time indoors; as a result, the maintenance of optimal indoor climate conditions has become important for their overall health and comfort. The main goal of this study is to predict numerically the flow and temperature patterns and the human thermal comfort conditions in an indoor environment using displacement ventilation. A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code has been used to analyze thermal comfort conditions for a full-scale ventilated room. Unstructured grids have been used to discretize the numerical domain. Before undertaking a detailed investigation, the code was validated by comparing the numerical results with experimental data available in the literature. A total of thirteen cases have been modelled to study the effects of inlet air velocity, air temperature, room walls temperature and vent location on the indoor thermal comfort. The study has been extended to cover not only unoccupied rooms but also occupied rooms. For the occupied rooms, different occupant configurations, namely standing person and person sitting on a chair, have been investigated. A realistic 3-D human model is developed to account for the complex geometry of the human body. The interaction between the human body and its surrounding environment has been analyzed, and its effects on thermal comfort zone have been investigated. Two different human thermal comfort indices, namely Percentage of Dissatisfaction (PD) and Effective Draft Temperature (EDT), have been used to predict the extent of thermal comfort zone inside the room space. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my appreciation to the faculty and staff members of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Old Dominion University for their encouragement and guidance during the course of my graduate studies. My dissertation enhanced my ability to do research in my Held and provided me with the opportunity to apply my knowledge and skills in the area of heat transfer. This would not have been possible without the assistance and guidance of my advisor, Dr. Sushil K. Chaturvedi, Professor and Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department. He was a source of inspiration and encouragement to me throughout the duration of my course study. It has also been a real pleasure to work with Dr. Surendra N. Tiwari, Eminent Professor of Mechanical Engineering and member of my dissertation committee, who provided me valuable suggestions and guidance on my graduate study. I would also like to acknowledge the help rendered to me by Dr. A. Sidney Roberts Jr., Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Dr. D. S. Parmar who served as members of my dissertation committee. I express my thanks and gratitude to all of my family members, especially my father and mother, for their prayer and warm feelings. I express my deep thanks to my wife for her support during my studies in the USA. In this regard I can not forget to pray to Allah for my kids, Osama and Razan, for the joy and happiness I had from them during these years. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I express my thanks to all of my friends for the help and support that they gave me during my study. Also I express my thanks to the Muslim Student Association, the Muslim Community of Tidewater and the Saudi Student Association for the support with which they provided me during my study in Norfolk. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.