Numerical Heat Transfer, Part A, 40: 531 541, 2001 Copyright # 2001 Taylor & Francis 1040-7782/01 $12.

00+ .00

ANALYSIS OF THERMAL ENVIRONM ENT IN AN AIRPORT PASSENGER TERM INAL Kyung-Hwan Kim, Seok-Youn Kang, and Jae-Heon Lee
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea

Myung-Do Oh
Department of Mechanical and Information Engineering, University of Seoul, Seoul, Korea
This article describes the effect of vertical air circulation on the thermal environment in an airport passenger terminal with induced ow by jet fans. In comparing the level of thermal comfort at the breathing line of 1.5 m in height, the results from the two models with or without the vertical air circulation show that the average predicted percentage of dissatis ed (PPD) is 8% in the former and 23% in the latter, respectively. It is concluded that the vertical air circulation adds to the improved thermal comfort for humans, with respect to ventilation in a large space such as an airport passenger terminal.

INTRODUCTION Large premises, such as the airport terminals or the international conference centers, have high ceilings and a large oor area. Most of passengers who use these facilities do not stay for as long a time as they do in o ces or their homes, but occupy the buildings concentrically for short periods of time. The indoor thermal environment in this kind of architecture is subject to rapid deterioration by the radiant heat or the outer thermal conditions. Furthermore, for aesthetic reasons, the glass panels are used extensively for the construction of transparent walls and roofs. The thermal environment in these structures is to a large extent regulated by the outdoor climatic changes. Further, because the space for human activity is small compared with the total available indoor space, the thermal buoyancy arising from the temperature di erence plays an important role in determining the movement of air ows in the space. It follows that many aspects of practical interest must be considered in the design of ventilation systems for large buildings. Generally, the locations of ventilation devices are determined based on designers experiences and current available design data, after heating and cooling

Received 3 April 2001; accepted 12 June 2001. Address correspondence to Dr. J.-H. Lee, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hanyang University, 17 Heangdang-dong, Sungdong-ku, Seoul, 133-791, Korea. E-mail: jhlee@hanyang.ac.kr 531

532

K.-H. KIM ET AL.

NOM ENCLATURE
C g I k l p q ST T Tm u x; y; z turbulent model constant gravitational acceleration turbulence intensity turbulent kinetic energy mixing length pressure heat ux heat generation temperature mean temperature velocity component spatial coordinates b e m r s coe cient of thermal expansion dissipation rate of turbulent kinetic energy viscosity density Prandtl number

Subscripts d di user i; j directions l laminar t turbulent

loads are calculated. This kind of conventional HVAC application approach however often causes too much energy waste as a result of de ciencies in the design concept. In particular, people may experience the thermal discomfort stemming from direct exposure to radiant heat. To improve the thermal environment in a large space and to reduce the energy consumption, the recent design with vertical air circulation has been applied to create good convective ventilation. For example, a ventilation system adopted in the Kansai International Airport in Japan combines microventilation with macroventilation [1]. The microventilation system is used to eliminate the partial heating load that is generated in the check-in-counter area. The macroventilation system is operated with the large air nozzle and the open air duct. The large air nozzle serves to prevent excessive indoor temperatures by generating vertical air circulation. The purpose of the present study is to analyze the e ect of vertical air circulation in an airport passenger terminal. In this study, the numerical calculations were performed for two designs with and without vertical air circulation to investigate the air ow characteristics, the temperature distributions, and the thermal comfort distributions.

DESCRIPTION OF THERM AL COM FORT The thermal comfort [2 6] has been de ned as ``the condition of mind that expresses satisfaction with a thermal environment. The reference to ``mind emphasizes that comfort is a psychological phenomenon. This is the basis of Fangers predicted mean vote (PMV) thermal comfort index, which is now accepted as ISO Standard 7730. To estimate how many people are dissatis ed in a given thermal environment, we introduced PPD. The PMV and PPD are calculated from a knowledge of the so-called six basic parameters, which consist of the air temperature, the radiant temperature, the air velocity, and the humidity of the environment, as well as the clothing and the activity level of the people. The PMV is given by a large group of people exposed to the thermal conditions of interest who provide a rating on the following scale: 3 (cold), 2 (cool), 1 (slightly cool), 0 (neutral), 1 (slightly warm), 2 (warm), and 3 (hot).

THERMAL ENVIRONMENT IN AN AIRPORT TERMINAL

533

If the average sensation over the large group of people was ``slightly warm, then the PMV would be 1. The PPD is related to the PMV and is based upon the individual variation of response for a given set of conditions. A value of PMV equal to 0 is neutral and provides comfort conditions with an associated PPD of 5%. A PMV of 1 or 1 provides a PPD of around 25%. DESIGN The present study introduces two designs in order to evaluate the thermal comfort in an airport passenger terminal. The HVAC system of the preliminary design has the general supply di user and the exhaust di user, while that of the improved design also has the jet fan and the open air duct to increase the vertical air circulation. Design Wit hout Vert ical Air Circulat ion Figure 1 shows the schematic of the lobby region of an airport passenger terminal employed in the present study. Its dimensions are 25 m wide, 18.5 m high, and 100 m long. In Figure 1, O.P denotes the reference location from which the x axis is measured along the roof direction, the y axis the southern wall direction, and the z axis the eastern wall direction, respectively. The lobby region consists of the ticketing=arrival lobby on the rst oor and the departure lounge on the second oor. The roof above the lobby is made of stainless-glass ber-steel compound material with the overall heat transfer coe cient of 0.49 W=(m2 K). The eastern, western, and southern walls are made of the outer wall of aluminum-uretan bobbling plate or glass of 0.018 m thickness. The overall heat transfer coe cient of the outer wall is 0.57 W=(m2 K), and the glass is 3.3 W=(m2 K). The shadow coe cient of the glass is 0.55. The oor is made of concrete (including pebbles and the soil), and its overall heat transfer coe cient is 0.60 W=(m2 K). Thirty-two supply di users (S1 S32) and 22 exhaust di users (E1 E22) for space cooling are installed in the lobby region to eliminate the design cooling load. Some supply di users consisting of a supply slot are attached to the grounds of the rst oor (S1 S12) and the second oor (S13 S 16) along the eastern, western, and southern walls; and some low velocity devices (S17 S32) are placed along the lobby center. The cooling air comes from the supply di user with the ow rate of 107,000 m3=h and the temperature of 18 C. There are exhaust di users on the top wall of the rst stair (E1 E10) and on the side wall of the second stair (E11 E16). The exhaust di users are also found in the toilets (E17 E20) and the smoking areas (E21 E22). The design temperature for cooling is set to be 26 C. In this article, people, machinery, and lighting in the lobby region are estimated to generate a total heat of 146,632 W based on the indoor load calculation [7]. People generate 26,013 W of heat in the rst oor and 27,359 W in the second oor. Ventilation facilities for cooling are concentrated in the activity zone on the rst and the second oors. Design w it h Vert ical Air Circulat ion The preliminary design may be expected to have a high roof temperature because of the hot air rising by heat strati cation from the oor level. To reduce the

534

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of an airport passenger terminal without vertical air circulation. (Only the devices in the rectangular box are applicable to the design with vertical air circulation.)

THERMAL ENVIRONMENT IN AN AIRPORT TERMINAL

535

roof temperature e ectively, the vertical air circulation is employed as a ventilation system design with the jet fans and the open air ducts. This design is contrived to reduce the roof temperature by way of macro air circulation. The present design, as shown in Figure 1, has four additional jet fans and four open air ducts to induce the macro air circulation, compared with the previous design. Each jet fan is located 11 m above the bottom with a sprayed ow rate of 3,000 m3=h and velocity of 17 m=s toward the indoor space. The open air duct has the thin membrane structure 7 m inches wide and 21 m inches long and is located on the upper side of the jet fan.

ANALYSIS Governing Equat ions The ow under consideration is three dimensional and turbulent, and has a steady state. The governing equations solved include those expressions for conservation of the mass, the momentum, the turbulent kinetic energy, the dissipation rate of turbulent kinetic energy, and the thermal equations as follows: q (rui ) 0 qxi q qp q quj qui (rui uj ) (ml m t ) qxj qxi qxj qxi qxj q q (rui k) qxi qxi q q (ruie) qxi qxi ml ml mt qe se qxi mt qk sk qxi rgi b(T T m )

(1) (2)

Gk Gb re

(3)

e e2 C1e (Gk C3e Gb ) C2e r k k ml mt qT sl st qxi Cm rk 2 e ST

(4)

q q (ruiT ) qxi qxi mt Gk mt

(5)

(6) (7)

quj qui quj qxi qx j qx i mt gi b qT st qxi C2e 1:44 C3e 1:44

Gb Cm 0:09 sk 1:0 C1e 1:44

(8)

se 0:9

sl 1:0

st 1:0

(9)

In Eq. (5), S T represents volumetric heat generation.

536

K.-H. KIM ET AL.

Table 1. Boundary and internal conditions for the present investigation Location S 1 S 3 , S 10 S 12 S4 S 9 S 13 S 16 S 17 S 32 E 1 E 10 E 11 E 16 E 17 ; E 18 E 20 ; E 21 E 19 ; E 22 East wall, west wall South wall North wall Roof 1st floor 2nd floor 1st floor activity zone 2nd floor activity zone Roof 2 m below roof Ventilation fan* Conditions u 1:3 m=s, T 18 C u 0:37 m=s, T 18 C u 0:47 m=s, T 18 C v 1:5 m=s, w 1:5 m=s, w 1:5 m=s, T 18 C u 2:69 m=s, qT =qxi 0 v 2:43 m=s, qT =qxi 0 v 0:19 m=s, qT =qxi 0 v 0:21 m=s, qT =qxi 0 v 0:19 m=s, qT =qxi 0 u v w 0, q 28:4 W=m2 u v w 0, q 21:8 W=m2 u v w 0, qT =qx i 0 u v w 0, q 8:6 W=m2 u v w 0, q 18:3 W=m2 u v w 0, q 18:3 W=m2 S T 11:9 W=m3 S T 10:2 W=m3 S T 6:9 W=m3 w 17 m=s

* Applicable only to the design with vertical air circulation.

Boundary and Int ernal Condit ions To obtain the physically meaningful solution to the problem in question, we must specif y the thermal and ow conditions of roofs, walls, supply di users, exhaust di users, and resident regions. The thermal boundary conditions are obtained from the heat ux rate using the Air-Conditioning Load Calculation Program [7], which is based on the transfer function method (TFM). This calculation gives the maximum cooling load of 281,673 W in the lobby region, of which 135,041 W is through the wall. It is supposed that 70% of the daylight through the glass is absorbed by the oors. Table 1 provides the summary of boundary and internal conditions. In the table, q denotes the heat ux from the surfaces and * is applicable only to the design with vertical air circulation. The k and e of impinging ow to the space through the supply di user, devices, and jet fans are calculated, respectively, as follows: k d 1:5(ud I) 2
0:75 ed Cm k 1:5 =l d

(10) (11)

where ud is the di user velocity, I is the turbulence intensity assumed to be 5% in this study, and l is the mixing length. Numerical Met hod In the present study, PHOENICS, a general-purpose commercial code, was used to analyze the air ow, the temperature distribution, and the thermal

THERMAL ENVIRONMENT IN AN AIRPORT TERMINAL

537

environment in the space. To t the irregular shape of the terminal, the body- tted coordinate system was adopted; i.e., the grid lines were arranged to match the physical bounding surfaces [8 9]. There are 700,000 grid cells used in the present study. More than 5,000 iterations were required to secure the convergence, which took about 50 hours on a personal computer with 600 MHz clock speed and 256 M RAM. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS To analyze the thermal environmental characteristics of two designs with and without vertical air circulation, we selected two planes of interest: vertical and horizontal. The former is an x y plane 58.5 m from the western wall of z 0, while the later is an y z plane 1.5 m above the second oor of x 5:5 m where the breathing line of a passenger is deemed to be present. Therm al Environment in t he Design Wit hout Vert ical Air Circulat ion Figures 2a, and 2b show the distributions of velocity and temperature at the selected vertical plane in the design without vertical air circulation, respectively. As can be seen from the distribution of velocity, the air ow for most of the vertical plane is below 0.2 m=s, except in the region around the low velocity device. In particular, the air ow near the ceiling appears stationary. The temperature distribution ranges from 24 C to 25 C on the second oor, and the average temperature is less than the

Figure 2. Computation results at the vertical x-y plane of the preliminary design without vertical air circulation (z 58:5 m): (a) velocity vector, (b) temperature contour.

538

K.-H. KIM ET AL.

design temperature of 26 C. However, local temperatures as high as 30 C 50 C are found at the ceiling, which is because of the solar pond e ect resulting from temperature strati cation through the ow stagnation. This considerable temperature di erence between the second oor and the roof generates the noticeable radiant heat exchange, which can results in thermal discomfort for passengers. Distributions of velocity, temperature, and PPD at the selected horizontal plane are shown in Figures 3a, 3b, and 3c, which shows the eastern half of the terminal. The ow distribution results of Figure 3a indicate that the velocity magnitude is 1.5 m=s around a handrail because of the low velocity device and is below 0.2 m=s in the other regions. The temperature distribution in Figure 3b reveals the temperature range of 18 C 26 C and the average temperature of about 25 C, which is lower than the design temperature of 26 C. To calculate the PPD distribution, we assume that the metabolic heat generation is 1.2 met (69.78 W=m2), clothing

Figure 3. Computation results at the half horizontal y-z plane of the preliminary design without vertical air circulation: (a) velocity vector, (b) temperature contour, (c) PPD contour.

THERMAL ENVIRONMENT IN AN AIRPORT TERMINAL

539

insulation is 0.5 clo (0.078 m 2K=W), and the relative humidity is 50%. The mean radiant temperature (MRT) [8] is 31.9 C with the aid of the mean wall surface temperature. As seen in Figure 3c, the range of PPD distribution is 5 30% except very near the di users. It is also noted that the average PPD is about 23% and the average PMV is about 0.9, giving a level of thermal comfort that may be considered ``slightly warm. Although the distribution of temperatures in human activity regions show values lower than the design temperature, the thermal comfort is hard to attain in the lobby designed without vertical air circulation. This outcome may be attributed to the presence of radiant heat, which in turn is a result of the thermal storage e ect in the ceiling shown in Figure 2. Therm al Environment in t he Design w it h Vert ical Air Circulat ion Figures 4a, and 4b show the distributions of velocity and temperature at the selected vertical planes in the design with vertical air circulation, respectively. As shown in Figure 4a, the jet ow sprayed from the jet fan generates 3 m=s velocity along the open air duct. Comparing the velocity distribution of the preliminary design without vertical air circulation with the improved design, the stationary zone near the ceiling disappeared and the velocity was 0.3 m=s higher than that of the preliminary one in the second oor. And it shows that the improved design produces a roof temperature ranging from 26 C to 31 C, which is 10 C lower than that of the preliminary one. In addition, the improved design yields a smaller temperature di erence between the roof and the second resident region. That is, the jet fan does not only generate the vertical air circulation, but it also interrupts the radiant heat from the ceiling to the human activity regions.

Figure 4. Computation results at the vertical x-y plane of the improved design with vertical air circulation (z = 58.5 m): (a) velocity vector, (b) temperature contour.

540

K.-H. KIM ET AL.

Figure 5. Computation results at the half horizontal y-z plane of the improved design with vertical air circulation: (a) velocity vector, (b) temperature contour, (c) PPD contour.

Figures 5a, 5b, and 5c show the distributions of velocity, temperature, and PPD, respectively at the eastern half of the selected horizontal plane in the improved design with vertical air circulation. From Figure 5a, both designs considering here show the similar characteristics of the velocity distribution. It is seen from Figure 5b that the temperature varies from 18 C to 28 C with a mean temperature of 25.5 C, which is slightly higher than the mean temperature of the previous design because the cooling air from the low velocity device and the hot air in the ceiling are mixed. The mean radiant temperature for evaluation of PPD distribution is calculated as 25.5 C in the design with vertical air circulation. As shown in Figure 5c, the PPD distribution except very near the di users is between 5% and 15%. It is also noted that the average PPD in this design is 8% and the average PMV is 0.3, giving rise to the level of thermal comfort that may be characterized as ``neutral or ``comfortable.

THERMAL ENVIRONMENT IN AN AIRPORT TERMINAL

541

CONCLUSIONS In the present study, the thermal environments in two designs of an airport passenger terminal with or without vertical air circulation have been investigated using numerical simulation. For both designs, the temperature in the human activity region is less than the design temperature of 26 C. The level of thermal comfort is ``slightly warm for the preliminary design without vertical air circulation, while it is ``neutral for the improved design with vertical air circulation. Therefore, the macromovement of air with vertical air circulation can improve the human thermal comfort in a large space using ventilation, compared with the conventional design without it. REFERENCES
1. T. Takeo, Field Experiment on Indoor Climate of Passenger Terminal Building of Kansai International Airport, Proc. SHASE, vol. 3, pp. 1493 1500, Hirosima, Japan, 1995. 2. R. Sinclair, CFD V entilation Study: Korea W orld Trade Center Convention Hall, Rowan Williams Davies & Irwin Inc., Guelph, Ontario, Canada, 1997. 3. L. H. Webb and K. C. Parsons, Case Studies of Thermal Comfort for People with Physical Disabilities, ASHRAE Transactions, Part B, pp. 883 892, 1998. 4. P. O. Fanger, Thermal Comfort: Analysis and Application in Environmental Engineering, Danish Technical Press, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1970. 5. V. Hassani and P. L. Miller, Thermal Comfort and Cold Air Distribution, ASHRAE T ransactions, Part B, pp. 1763 1771, 1998. 6. American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Thermal Comfort, ASHRAE Atlanta, GA, 1997. 7. W. Y. Choi, C. K. Ko, J. H. Lee, and H. S. Ryu, Development of a TFM Load Calculation Program Based on Thermal Response Factor, Korean Journal of Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering, vol. 1, no. 5, pp. 684 691, 1999. 8. J. R. Howell, A Catalog of Radiation Con guration Factors, 2nd ed., pp. 255 370, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1982. 9. J. M. Ludwig, H. Q. Qin, and D. B. Spalding, T he PHOENICS Reference Manual T R=200, CHAM, England, 1989.