CFD Study on Thermal Implication towards Human Body in Office Environment

Abstract

Temperatures are rising gradually around the world due to the issue of global warming. This condition also affects those who have to work for long hours. A comfortable work environment helps employees to increase work productivity. Thermal comfort is the occupant’s satisfaction with the surrounding thermal conditions. Therefore, the objective of this study is to evaluate the thermal environmental conditions of air conditioning through Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations. The distributions of environmental parameters such as air velocity, air temperature, radiant temperature, inside an office room with air-conditioning are presented. Based on these distributions, spatial profiles of Predicted Mean Vote Index (PMV) are obtained to illustrate thermal conditions intuitively. This study was conducted under controlled environment inside special laboratory. To achieve this model office environment has been built in an environmental chamber. The distribution of PMV indicates that operative temperature at the 23 °C shows that the PMV is comfortable. The value of PMV in operative temperature at 23 °C is 0.79 near the skin of an occupant. The research outputs provide useful information for designers of the air-conditioning system to build a comfortable indoor environment in the office environment.