New ventilation index for evaluating imperfect mixing conditions - Analysis of Net Escape Velocity based on RANS approach

The concentration of contaminant in a room is not always uniformly distributed and hence it is important to evaluate the ventilation efficiency at various points or domains in the room to optimize and reduce the ventilation rate and the air-conditioning load of the room. Various ventilation indices have been developed to evaluate the ventilation efficiency of a point or a domain based on the contaminant concentration, for example, the age of air, the Scale for Ventilation Efficiency series, Visitation Frequency and Purging Flow Rate. This paper presents a new concept of ventilation index, Net Escape Velocity (hereafter NEV), as an index for ventilation efficiency in an indoor environment. NEV represents the effective velocity at which the contaminant is transported/diluted from a target point. The objectives of the present work are to clarify the definition and concept of NEV on the basis of CFD simulation and to investigate the calculation methods of NEV. NEV is defined by contaminant concentration, convective flux and diffusion flux at a point. Using NEV normalized by the convection velocity at a target point, we can obtain information of the turbulent diffusion effect for removal/dilution contaminant and of the direction of diffusion flux which is the same or not with convective flux. It can be said that NEV is an index of ventilation efficiency that can evaluate the ventilation performance at a point and enable understanding of the forming structure of a contaminant concentration at a point. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.