TY - GEN
T1 - Numerical Analysis of Two Air Conditioning Systems for Thermal Comfort in School Classrooms in Oman
T2 - 5th International Conference on Building Energy and Environment, COBEE 2022
AU - Khan, Hayder M.
AU - Al-Saadi, Saleh
AU - Al-Hashim, Alya
AU - Al-Khatri, Hanan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
PY - 2023/1/1
Y1 - 2023/1/1
N2 - In Oman, air conditioning is required in public classrooms to ensure thermally comfortable conditions for users, considering the harsh hot climate. In general, air conditioning is provided by conventional mechanical systems, such as split units that consume a considerable amount of energy. Besides the environmental consequences, this practice takes a significant portion of the governmental budget, as public-school operation cost is funded by the government. Increasing the thermostat setting combined with raising air velocity is promising in maintaining thermally comfortable classrooms with reduced cooling energy. Increasing air velocity is possible by ventilation systems, including the stratum system, where thermal comfort is achieved by directing the airstream toward the upper part of the human body. This paper reports the findings of numerical simulations using STAR CCM+, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. A numerical model of a typical classroom was generated in STAR CCM+ and was then validated using experimental data conducted for an actual classroom. The validated model was utilized to explore the effect of applying 15 ventilation scenarios, including a stratum ventilation system. The results showed that the conventional air conditioning systems achieved thermal comfort at several spots within the domain, but have a risk of the thermal draft. On the other hand, the stratum ventilation system achieved better thermal comfort at relatively higher air temperature compared to the conventional air conditioning systems. The results inferred that the stratum system might need lower energy consumption than the traditional cooling system.
AB - In Oman, air conditioning is required in public classrooms to ensure thermally comfortable conditions for users, considering the harsh hot climate. In general, air conditioning is provided by conventional mechanical systems, such as split units that consume a considerable amount of energy. Besides the environmental consequences, this practice takes a significant portion of the governmental budget, as public-school operation cost is funded by the government. Increasing the thermostat setting combined with raising air velocity is promising in maintaining thermally comfortable classrooms with reduced cooling energy. Increasing air velocity is possible by ventilation systems, including the stratum system, where thermal comfort is achieved by directing the airstream toward the upper part of the human body. This paper reports the findings of numerical simulations using STAR CCM+, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. A numerical model of a typical classroom was generated in STAR CCM+ and was then validated using experimental data conducted for an actual classroom. The validated model was utilized to explore the effect of applying 15 ventilation scenarios, including a stratum ventilation system. The results showed that the conventional air conditioning systems achieved thermal comfort at several spots within the domain, but have a risk of the thermal draft. On the other hand, the stratum ventilation system achieved better thermal comfort at relatively higher air temperature compared to the conventional air conditioning systems. The results inferred that the stratum system might need lower energy consumption than the traditional cooling system.
KW - CFD
KW - Classroom
KW - Stratum
KW - Thermal comfort
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85172728559&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85172728559&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/6534ff9e-7be4-36a6-b479-0104db6b27c6/
U2 - 10.1007/978-981-19-9822-5_16
DO - 10.1007/978-981-19-9822-5_16
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85172728559
SN - 9789811998218
T3 - Environmental Science and Engineering
SP - 139
EP - 148
BT - Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Building Energy and Environment
A2 - Wang, Liangzhu Leon
A2 - Ge, Hua
A2 - Ouf, Mohamed
A2 - Zhai, Zhiqiang John
A2 - Qi, Dahai
A2 - Sun, Chanjuan
A2 - Wang, Dengjia
PB - Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Y2 - 25 July 2022 through 29 July 2022
ER -