The effect of ceiling configurations on indoor air motion and ventilation flow rates

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects of a building parameter, namely ceiling configuration, on indoor natural ventilation. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code Phoenics was used with the RNG k-epsilon turbulence model to study wind motion and ventilation flow rates inside the building. All the CFD boundary conditions were described. The simulation results were first validated by wind tunnel experiment results in detail, and then used to compare rooms with various ceiling configurations in different cases. The simulation results generated matched the experimental results confirming the accuracy of the RNG k-epsilon turbulence model to successfully predict indoor wind,motion for this study. Our main results reveal that ceiling configurations have certain effects on indoor airflow and ventilation flow rates although these effects are fairly minor. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.