Using CFD to evaluate indoor air quality

It is possible to use contaminant transport analysis software along with computational fluid dynamics software such as CFD0 to estimate the effectiveness of possible household air quality interventions. Doing this has the potential to reduce cost by reducing the need to conduct expensive field testing.

Basic Process

The basic procedure to create a computational model to evaluate the effectiveness of a proposed household air quality intervention is as follows:

1. Download and install the appropriate software packages. This guide describes the process using CONTAM and CFD0, which are published by the NIST
2. Create a model of the space you intend to evaluate in CONTAM
   1. Enter the dimensions of the area to be evaluated
   2. Create inlets for all doors and windows in the area
   3. create a wind profile
3. Add a pollution source to the CONTAM model
   1. enter physical information for each pollutant that is to be evaluated (molecular weight, diffusion coefficient, etc.)
   2. create a schedule for the contaminant source
   3. place the source in the model
4. Create a second model of the space you intend to evaluate in CFD0
   1. Enter the dimensions of the space
   2. Import all the paths (windows) from the CONTAM model
   3. Set the number of control volumes
   4. Chose the sensor location for the simulation

Creating a CONTAM model

More details soon

Creating a CFD0 model

More details soon

Running the simulation

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Interpreting the results

More details soon

Next steps

The next steps.

Conclusions

More details soon

References

Contact details

Contact mdeyoung@mtu.edu