Improve Airflow in Buildings

By DE Editors

Flomerics Inc.(Marlborough, MA) has announced six new SmartParts forits Flovent software said to be designed to save time and improveaccuracy in simulating the performance of diffusers. Flovent isCFD (computational fluid dynamics) software that predicts and simulatescomplex ventilation, airflow,heat transfer, and contamination distribution problems in and aroundbuildings. It has tools that let you assemble models from libraries,and it provides automated gridding and distributed processing acrossnetworks.

In the past, says Flomerics, modeling diffusers required detailedinformation from manufacturers about physical tests, building a roommodel to simulate the tests, and adjusting the model to match the testresults. The new SmartParts models, asserts Flomerics, can simply bedropped into a Flovent model and require only commonly available datafor the diffuser such as outside dimensions, flow rate, and temperaturedata.

Flomerics says that it has “carefully tested these SmartParts anddetermined that provide a similar level of accuracy equal to building aroom model and matching the flow.”

The new SmartParts models are based on research done by Drs. QingyanChen and Jelena Srebric of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,who are now professors at Purdue University and Pennsylvania StateUniversity, respectively. The Flovent SmartParts for displacement,square ceiling, round ceiling, vortex ceiling, and grille diffusers arebased on momentum methodology developed by Chen and Srebric. Themomentum method de-couples momentum and mass flow in the CFDsimulations from the room airflow. This method uses the initialmomentum and mass flow rate from a diffuser as boundary conditions forthe diffusers.

For more information, visit the Flovent page on the Flomerics website.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.