Evaluating the influence of the width of inlet slot on the prediction of indoor airflow: Comparison with experimental data

The aim of this work is to investigate the influence of two values of inlet slot width on the velocity characteristics and turbulent intensity of the airflow inside a rectangular room. The experimental data used to check the numerical results concerns a rectangular room where the air is supplied horizontally on the upper left and is exhausted through an opening on the lower right on the opposite side. The performance of three turbulence models, standard k-ɛ, RNG k-ɛ, and k-ω, in predicting the three-dimensional airflow in that room has also been investigated. The results for Reynolds number of 5000 are presented for dimensionless horizontal velocities and turbulent kinetic energy for two planes of the room and two inlet arrangements, one opening as large as the room and another with half of the width of the room. The results have indicated that the main features of the flow were captured by the three turbulence models investigated. On the whole, the performance of the standard k-ɛ model was better than those of the other two turbulence models. In particular, the k-ω model performed better in the configuration with the largest air opening than in that with the smallest one, while the RNG k-ɛ model presented the opposite behavior. The comparative study between both geometries demonstrated that for slots much smaller than the width of the room, three-dimensional effects become important.