A cooperative ceiling air supply method to satisfy personal thermal preferences in a discretionary indoor position

Rapid and personalized regulation of the thermal environment is desired in air ventilation designs. Traditional air-conditioning systems regulate indoor environments by cooling or heating the entire room, while current personal air-conditioning devices are usually limited to certain fixed locations. A novel design of a multiple ceiling air vents configuration together with its control strategies is proposed to quickly cool a flexible indoor position. Considering the influence of the cooperation of multiple air vents on the personal microenvironment, the possible occupant locations are classified into three types of regions according to the distances from the air vents. The number of adjacent air vents offering personalized regulations is determined accordingly. Control strategies describing the appropriate flow rate and the incident angle of each air vent for occupants with personal thermal requirements in certain locations are determined by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. This method allows the microenvironments of occupants to quickly reach PMV values between -0.5 and 0.5, with surface air velocities below 0.8 m/s. Up to 36% of the capital costs can be saved by arranging the ceiling air vents using the proposed method instead of in arrays.