INDOOR AIR TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION – AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO BUILDING SIMULATION

Abstract

The current paper presents a model to predict indoor air temperature distribution. The approach is based on the energy conservation equation which is written for a certain number of finite volumes within the flow domain. The magnitude of the flow is estimated from a scale analysis of the momentum conservation equation. Discretized two or three-dimensional domains provide a set of algebraic equations. The resulting set of non-linear equations is iteratively solved using the line-by-line Thomas Algorithm. As long as the only equation to be solved is the conservation of energy and its coefficients are not strongly dependent on the temperature field, the solution is considerably fast. Therefore, the application of such model to a whole building system is quite reasonable. Two case studies involving buoyancy driven flows were carried out and comparisons with CFD solutions were performed. The results are quite promising for cases involving relatively strong couplings between heat and airflow.