Challenges of using CFD simulation for the design and online control of ventilation systems

Vision of China’s future urban construction reform: In the perspective of comprehensive prevention and control for multi disasters

“… Berlanga et al (2018) ; Cao (2018) ; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2020) ; Kong et al (2017) ; Li (2020) ; Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, PRC (2020) ; Ren and Cao (2020) .…”

Fast prediction for multi-parameters (concentration, temperature and humidity) of indoor environment towards the online control of HVAC system

“…Monitoring is the use of limited sensors to monitor changes in regulated environmental parameters (e.g., pollutant concentration, temperature), automatically recording monitoring data as input. Based on monitoring data of targeted environment parameters, it is able to make rapid predictions for the non-uniform distributions of indoor environment parameters by using faster-than-real-time prediction models, whose prediction time is much less than the actual diffusion time of indoor environmental parameters, thus making indoor environmental conditioning more safer and reliable (Cao and Ren 2018;Cao 2019). Finally, the predicted indoor environments will be assessed by environmental evaluation indicators, to minimize the energy consumption within acceptable environmental requirements to realize the dynamic control of intelligent HVAC systems.…”

Fast prediction for indoor environment: Models assessment

“…Advanced designs and controls of heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems are being implemented to improve energy efficiency and thermal comfort of buildings. [1][2][3][4][5][6] Effective design and control of indoor environment requires accurate and rapid predictions. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is an important tool for predicting airflows and pollutants transport in the indoor environment.…”

“…1,5,6 However, when the targeted flow domain is large or the air flow is complex, CFD simulation would require a large amount of computing meshes. 1 Consequently, a very long computing time of several days or months is needed. CFD has been widely applied in the design and optimum operation of HVAC system for the control of the indoor environment.…”

“…a whole building with hundreds of rooms) is very challenging and difficult due to considerable computing time and resource requirements. For online control, directly using CFD for faster-than-real-time prediction is almost impossible, 1 due to expensive computational time of CFD, usually much longer than the physical variation time (e.g. air pollutants transport).…”