Improving Thermal Comfort via Spatially Adaptive HVAC (LB-17-C059)

This paper presents a new, interior-space, environmental conditioning strategy, referred to as spatially adaptive heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC), where supply air locations within a room are repositioned in response to changing thermal loads or other room conditions. In order to quantitatively examine the technical merits of this concept, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of a typical office was created using SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation software and benchmarked using full-scale, experimental, velocity and temperature data from the literature. In light of promising results, a one-fifth scale model office was constructed to examine additional scenarios not covered experimentally in the literature and to validate computer simulations of these scenarios. Initial results from the scale model tests are described, and preliminary engineering concepts for achieving supply register relocation are presented. In addition, the opportunities, challenges, limitations, and potential for energy savings associated with this new strategy are discussed.