| Abstract: |
It is evident that the objective of this study is to explore how simulating Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) can be used for optimizing Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems in commercial building mechanical infrastructure mainly in terms of energy observance and thermal comfort improvements. Four building zones (office, laboratory, lobby, and server room) were reproduced using the ANSYS Fluent 2023 R1 tool for a full simulation of airflow, heat transfer and contaminant transport. The systematic evaluation of Five HVAC designs ranged from conventional baseline to fully CFD-optimized configurations comprising annual energy consumption, coefficient of performance (COP), Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) thermal comfort index and carbon dioxide emission reduction. The design further optimized using the CFD reduced annual energy consumption by 33.8% (485 MWh - 321 MWh), improved COP by 51.2% (2.85- 4.31) and resulted in a cumulative CO₂ emissions reduction of23.8%, which is equivalent to INR14.11 lakh saved annually as well Thermal comfort indices in the experiments reached 0.87 PMV and this exceeded ASHRAE Standard 55 benchmarks for thermal comfort. The simulated results were well validated against the experimental measurements, yielding errors below 4.7% for all studied performance parameters. Such results validate CFD as an essential method for the development of sustainable mechanical system building configurations. |
