The Use of Cfd Tools for Indoor Environmental Design

This paper presents a short review of the applications of CFD to indoor environment design and studies, and briefly introduces the most popular CFD models used. The paper concludes that, although CFD is a powerful tool for indoor environment design and studies, a standard procedure must be followed so that the CFD program and user can be validated and the CFD results can be trusted. The procedure includes the use of simple cases that have basic flow features interested and experimental data available for validation. The simulation of indoor environment also requires creative thinking and the handling of complex boundary conditions. It is also necessary to play with the numerical grid resolution and distribution in order to get a grid-independent solution with reasonable computing effort. This investigation also discusses issues related to heat transfer. It is only through these incremental exercises that the user and the CFD program can produce results that can be trusted and used for indoor environment design and studies.