Thermal Performance Investigation at Different Temperature and Airflow Settings in a Conference Hall of Expo Building

Abstract

The airflow distribution for a large space, such as a conference hall, is quite challenging to achieve a good and uniform thermal distribution. In the recent study, insufficient quantitative knowledge has been provided, notably for the appropriate supply air temperature and air velocity for the conference hall environment. In this study, a full-scale conference hall was simulated extensively for an expo building in Taiwan. A total of nine experiment numbers were carried out with various supply air temperature and air velocity settings. Through the use of a CFD approach, this study seeks to identify the ideal parameters for a comfortable and acceptable airflow distribution and temperature, with an eye toward potential compromises with an energy-efficient approach. The results demonstrate that the temperature distribution ranges from 18 to 26 °C, indicating an acceptable indoor thermal environment, depending on the parameter settings. The best settings for providing a pleasant indoor thermal environment are with a supply air temperature and air velocity of 15 °C and 1 m/s, which can keep the PMV index between −0.5 and 0.5. Utilizing a greater temperature setting may save energy, but sufficient air velocity must be addressed in order to meet the indoor thermal conditions. Furthermore, a greater air velocity may generate more noise and disrupt the situation in the conference hall, so it must be selected specifically.