Experimental investigation of indoor air flow pattern changes due to the influence of thermal plumes of heat loads

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Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Insinööritieteiden korkeakoulu | Master's thesis

Authors

Date

2018-06-11

Department

Major/Subject

Energy Systems for Industry and Communities / Building Energy Technology

Mcode

ENG21

Degree programme

Master's Programme in Energy Technology (EEN)

Language

en

Pages

60+11

Series

Abstract

Indoor air quality and comfort is a major concern in commercial buildings. Large buildings are also commonly used to carry out different indoor activities. Users' dissatisfaction on thermal condition is low when there is high cooling demand. It is challenging to handle cooling loads with ventilation especially in spaces where convection flows of high heat loads interact with air distribution. At this study air flow interaction between thermal plumes and vertical air distribution has been experimented in many different scenarios recreating large enclosures environments in a laboratory test chamber. The conditions that lead to the sudden and rapid indoor air change because of the influence of thermal plumes created by heat loads have been investigated. Air mean velocity, draught rate and turbulence intensity were used as main indicators for air flow characteristics measured and for the perception of occupant’s comfort, resulting that at lower position highest uncomfortable environment was reached. However, with established conditions, power applied determined test chamber dimensions, the collapse phenomenon was not observed. As there are no other experiments on this very specific field, the observations and results indicate the departure points for future investigations on this issue.

Description

Supervisor

Kosonen, Risto

Thesis advisor

Kilpeläinen, Simo

Keywords

large enclosures, airflow characteristics, thermal loads, buoyancy flows, diffuse ceiling air distribution

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Citation

Permanent link to this item

https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-201806293801

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[dipl] Insinööritieteiden korkeakoulu / ENG