SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJOSCIENCE ISSN NO: 2582-4600 VOL.

8, ISSUE 7, JULY 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24113/ijoscience.v8i7.488

CFD Simulation of HVAC System in a Building using

ANSYS - Fluent
Imran Ansari Atul Shankar Suman
Research Scholar Assistant Professor
Master of Technology Dept. of Mechanical
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering Engineering Corporate Institute of Science & Technology
Corporate Institute of Science & Technology Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India
Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract: The aim of the study is to simulate the temperature, humidity, cleanliness and air motion .The
functionality of a HVAC system in different situations, widely used terms in air-conditioning systems are discussed
summer and winter time, using specialized software here. According to American Society of Heating,
ANSYS-Fluent. A 2D building model was realized and Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)
simulating the internal conditions represented the main standards, the thermal comfort is “the condition of mind
elements of the study. There are studied the indoor air which expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment”.
temperature and air velocity in different conditions. The As per ASHRAE standards 62, acceptable IAQ is “air in
results are presented as graphs/plots and spectra of interest which there are no known contaminants at harmful
parameters. HVAC system functionality simulation using concentrations as determined by cognizant authorities and
ANSYS-Fluent is providing important results for the studied with which a substantial majority (80% more) of people
scenario. exposed do not express dissatisfaction".
The study aimed to simulate HVAC system functionality in Addition of moistness to the air, without variation in its dry
different situations, summer and winter time, using bulb temperature is identified as humidification. Better
specialized software ANSYS-Fluent. The realization of 2D comfort conditions and IAQ can be maintained through
building model and simulation of external and internal optimum design, appropriate location of supply diffusers
conditions it represents the main elements of simulation. As and optimum ventilations supply rates using C02 based
general conclusion, it can be stated with certainty that the Demand Control Ventilation (DCV). According to
recently implemented HVAC system reaches its task and
provides adequate comfort conditions inside the amphitheater International Energy Agency (IEA), DCV is defined as a
during both seasons. ventilation system where the air flow rate is governed by a
sensor detecting humidity or airborne pollutants, in order to
The average velocities, are slightly bigger during summer keep the concentration levels of the detected substances
season, due to higher airflows required. However, this effect below a preset value.
doesn’t affect the occupants, because they are lower than the 1.1 Parameters for a comfortable environment
comfort ones. HVAC system functionality simulation using The best possible environmental conditions in an
ANSYS-Fluent is providing important results for the studied enclosure/cabin are achieved by designing
scenario. This type of analysis can be used for pre- HVAC system which provides right degree of comfort. The
examination of the future projects in order to obtain factors which contribute mainly in creating a comfortable
functional systems and verify the all requirements for the environment are:
HVAC installation. The results can be used in further analysis  Airflow rate
for determining the correlations to the main comfort  Air quality
indicators, PMV and PPD.  Temperature
 Mean Radiant Temperature (MRT)
Keywords: CFD analysis; indoor climate; HVAC system;  Relative humidity
2Dbuilding: numerical simulation; ANSYS Fluent Apart from these other controllable environmental factors
1. Introduction of HVAC system are proper ambience and noise. At design stage an HVAC
In the present technological culture, peoples spend more engineer has to consider maximum parameters which affect
than 90% of their time in air-conditioned houses, offices the thermal comfort because a greater degree of comfort
and vehicle. These artificially created indoor surroundings can be achieved by controlling the above mentioned
have contributed both their benefits and disadvantages to factors. In order to achieve the necessity of a client; one
the human beings. has to also include the identification and enforcement of
Air-conditioning is defined as simultaneous control of good ventilation practice with consideration of cost. The

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SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJOSCIENCE ISSN NO: 2582-4600 VOL.8, ISSUE 7, JULY 2022

best suited values of relative humidity and temperature 1. Conduction through exterior walls, roofs, and glass
which are required for maintaining comfortable indoor 2. Conduction through interior partitions, ceilings and
environments vary as per the climatic conditions. floors
Table 1 Composition of the fresh air 3. Solar radiation through glass
Components % by Volume 4. Lighting
Nitrogen 78 5. People
6. Equipment
Oxygen 21 7. Heat from infiltration of outside air through openings
CO2 0.03 (windows, doors, cracks, etc.).These heat gains are
Others 0.97 categorized into two groups - those generated from external
Table 2 Optimum temperature and relative humidity values sources that is, from outside the room and those generated
for thermal comfort internally.
Items 1 through 3 and 7 are external heat gains and items 4
Temperature 21 – 26° C
through 6 are internal heat gains. The heat gains are
Relative humidity 40 - 60 % classified as sensible and latent heat gains. Sensible heat
Airflow speed 0.1 - 0.15 m/s gains result in increasing the air temperature, whereas the
The appropriate value of the in-cabin temperature for latent heat gains are due to the addition of water vapour,
thermal comfort is a function of climatic conditions. which increase humidity. Items 1 through 4 are sensible
During winter season the optimum value of in-cabin heat gains. Items 5 and 7 are part sensible and part latent,
temperature lies in between 21 – 23 °C; while during and item 6 can fall in either category or both depending on
summer it varies from 21 – 26 °C. the type of equipment.
The variation of RH with air temperature is presented in
figure 1. It is observed that RH value decreases with 2. Case description
increasing temperature and vice-versa. Although human The functionality of the HVAC system and further building
beings feel comfortable in a wide range of RH with services is a very significant objective for all type of
different air temperature, high relative humidity (over buildings and even more for positions with high density of
60%) create the discomfort to passengers and also leads to people. The present study is analyzing the HVAC system
condensation of water vapour on the windshields/glasses of functionality, in steady state conditions, for a college
car. It can also cause shorting of electrical components. amphitheater, being also available for a conference hall. The
The passenger feels discomfort with RH lower than 40% capacity of the audience is about 100 people, distributed as
and it causes a dry sensation, nosebleeds, and respiratory 12 people on 8 rows. Each row is placed on a higher step
problems. than previous one – Fig. 1.

Figure 1 Relation between RH and temperature of air

1.2 Room Heat Gains
The heat gain components that contribute to the room-
cooling load are indicated in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Components of cooling load

Figure 3 Geometry of the amphitheater a) Plane section;
As shown, it consists of the following components.
b) Longitudinal section

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SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJOSCIENCE ISSN NO: 2582-4600 VOL.8, ISSUE 7, JULY 2022

The preserved air is presented by the aid of a total 4 inlet

grilles of 0.6mx0.6m placed at ceiling and 24 inlet grilles of
0.15mx0.5m placed at risers - Figure 3. The removal of the
air is realized by 6 outlet grilles of 0.6mx0.6m placed at
ceiling.

Energy Equation:

Figure 4 Longitudinal section – position of inlet and outlet

grilles
3. Modeling HVAC system
The simulations are accomplished in steady state regime, by
turbulent flow and k-ε model, suitable for estimation of
airflow and heat transfer inside closed domains. The results
obtained refers to the temperature and velocity data inside
the amphitheater. Performing numerical simulations carried
out by CFD tool, ANSYS-Fluent, the differential equations
of heat transfer and fluid mechanics were resolved:
Conservation of mass or continuity equation:

The objective of the current study is to analyse the effect of

the surface roughness on the hydraulic performance of the
centrifugal pump. For the study of the above mentioned
analysis a 2D CFD simulation is carried out by using
ANSYS fluent 2020 R2. The CAD model, domain of fluid,
meshing, applied boundary conditions and initial
conditions will be discussed in detail.

Momentum Conservation Equation

Figure 5 Name selection of fluid domain

Mesh Generation
The mesh generated in the domain quard mesh. For
capturing the turbulence near the wall 7 inflation layers

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SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJOSCIENCE ISSN NO: 2582-4600 VOL.8, ISSUE 7, JULY 2022

given domain model. For domain yzx mm element size is different plane of case 1 (Inlet Grills 1- 0.18 m/s, Inlet Grills
taken. 2- 0.15m/s, External Ceiling Wall- 44°C, Internal Wall-
44°C, External Wall- 44°C, Q- 3500 m3/hr) as shown in
figure below.

Figure 7 Velocity contour of case 1

Figure 6 Mesh generation with standard settings.

Through the global mesh sizing settings, ANSYS Meshing®

predictable that there were some curves around the body.
However the meshing was very coarse and it was only the
initial guess by the software. In order to capture more
accurate data through solver we needed to improve the
mesh. The first thing to do was changing the mesh sizing
parameters & then change inflation layer setting.
Meshing of domain is done and total number of nodes and
elements were found to be 121256 and 120446 respectively. Figure 8 Velocity vector of case 1
4. Results & Discussion
The computational results for the following cases are
presented and discussed:

Table 3 Details of cases considered for present analysis is

tabulated below:

Case Case Case

Location Variable 1 2 3 Figure 9 Temperature contour of case 1

Velocity The velocity contour in the fig 7 above clearly represents

Inlet Grills 1 Inlet 0.18 0.2 0.22 the velocity variation within the domain for inlet treated air
velocity. It can be seen that velocity variation has maximum
Velocity limit of 0.241 m/s which is at top where comfort is not
Inlet Grills 2 Inlet 0.15 0.167 0.18 much desired as per velocity value which further validates
the scheme in terms of velocity. Fig 8 & 9 shows velocity
External Ceiling vector & temperature contour respectively of case 1.
Wall Temp 44 44 44
4.2 CFD Analysis of Case 2
Internal Wall Temp 44 44 44
After performing CFD analysis using semi-empirical model
External Wall Temp 44 44 44 k-ε. Velocity contour, pressure contour & velocity vector at
different plane of case 2 (Inlet Grills 1- 0.2 m/s, Inlet Grills
Q(m3/hr) 3500 3900 4300 2- 0.167 m/s, External Ceiling Wall- 44°C, Internal Wall-
44°C, External Wall- 44°C, Q- 3900 m3/hr) as shown in
All the results for different cases were obtained with the figure below.
same meshing resolution, the same realization k-ϵ model,
and also the same boundary conditions

4.1 CFD Analysis of Case 1

After performing CFD analysis using semi-empirical model
k-ε. Velocity contour, pressure contour & velocity vector at

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SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJOSCIENCE ISSN NO: 2582-4600 VOL.8, ISSUE 7, JULY 2022

Figure 10 Velocity contour of case 2 Figure 13 Velocity contour of case 3

Figure 14 Velocity vector of case 3

Figure 11 Velocity vector of case 2

Figure 15 Temperature contour of case 3

Figure 12 Temperature contour of case 2
The velocity contour in the fig 13 above clearly represents
The velocity contour in the fig 10 above clearly represents
the velocity variation within the domain for inlet treated air
the velocity variation within the domain for inlet treated air
velocity. It can be seen that velocity variation has maximum
velocity. It can be seen that velocity variation has maximum
limit of 0.295 m/s which is at top where comfort is not
limit of 0.268 m/s which is at top where comfort is not
much desired as per velocity value which further validates
much desired as per velocity value which further validates
the scheme in terms of velocity. Fig 14 & 15 shows velocity
the scheme in terms of velocity. Fig 11 & 12 shows velocity
vector & temperature contour respectively of case 3.
vector & temperature contour respectively of case 2.
4.4 Influence of maximum velocity on different HVAC
4.3 CFD Analysis of Case 3 system
The graph shown above is plotted for highest velocity inlet
After performing CFD analysis using semi-empirical model case for different height of 1m, 2m, 3m and 4m as series
k-ε. Velocity contour, pressure contour & velocity vector at height 1 to 4 respectively. It is clearly shown that the
different plane of case 3 (Inlet Grills 1- 0.22 m/s, Inlet location at 4 m height has a maximum point of 0.22 m/s
Grills 2- 0.18 m/s, External Ceiling Wall- 44°C, Internal velocity which can be accepted for human comfort
Wall- 44°C, External Wall- 44°C, Q- 4300 m3/hr) as shown perspective.
in figure below.

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SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJOSCIENCE ISSN NO: 2582-4600 VOL.8, ISSUE 7, JULY 2022

0.25 height 1
case A3 discharge rate the velocity is increased by 13.20%
height 2 from 0.159 to 0.18 m/s.
0.20 3. If we increased discharge rate from 3500 to 3900
height 3
m3/hr (case 2) it is observed that as we increase the
0.15 height 4
velocity(m/s)

discharge rate the velocity is increased by 11.1%

from 0.18 to 0.20 m/s.
0.10 4. If we increased discharge rate from 3900 to 4300
m3/hr (case 3) it is observed that as we increase the
0.05 discharge rate, the velocity is increased by 10%
from 0.20 to 0.22 m/s.
0.00 5. In case 3 at location of 4 m height, it has a
0.00 5.00 10.00 15.00 maximum point of 0.22 m/s velocity which can be
-0.05 distance(m) accepted for human comfort perspective. This
results shows the most optimum result in current
study.
Figure 16 Plot for highest velocity inlet case for different This type of study can be used for pre-examination
height of 1m, 2m, 3m and 4m. of the upcoming projects in order to obtain functional
systems and prove the all necessities for the HVAC
4.5 Influence of Discharge on different HVAC system installation. The results can be used in advance analysis for
performance parameters determining the correlations to the main comfort indicators,
PMV and PPD.
Table 4 Values of different performance parameters at
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