epub Simulating the Breath of Buildings: Advanced Computational Ventilation: Advanced Computational Ventilation

Why does a building need to breathe? And how can we predict that breath before we build?

Simulating the Breath of Buildings: Advanced Computational Ventilation bridges 28 years of research, from the original 1998 computational work developed on P133/P233 processors in Visual Basic and Fortran, to the state-of-the-art in 2026 with GPU-accelerated CFD, AI, and Digital Twins.

This is not a theoretical manual. It is a complete engineering journey from physics to code to design assessment.

What You Will Find Inside:

• Fundamentals of Ventilation & IAQ: ASHRAE 62-1989 to ASHRAE 62.1-2022, ventilation requirements, indoor contaminants - odour, CO2, tobacco smoke, formaldehyde (HCHO), radon, particulates, moisture - and the olf / decipol concept.
• Four Ventilation Strategies Explained: Local Exhaust Ventilation (LEV), Piston Ventilation, Displacement Ventilation, and Mixing Ventilation with schematics and when each fails.
• Thermal Comfort as a Design Tool: Heat balance, Effective Temperature, Operative Temperature, Fanger's PMV-PPD model (1972), radiant asymmetry, vertical temperature gradient, warm/cold floor, and the modified draught model including turbulence intensity.
• Mathematical Core: Governing equations for incompressible flow, Boussinesq approximation, Finite Volume Method, discretization - Central, Upwind, QUICK, Hybrid schemes, and the 4 basic rules for convergence.
• Pressure-Velocity Coupling: Complete derivation of SIMPLE, SIMPLER and SIMPLEC on staggered grids, under-relaxation, inertia factor for buoyancy, and why pressure correction fails.
• Turbulence Modeling: From mixing length to one-equation and standard k-ε model with wall functions, low-Reynolds k-ε models, convergence treatment for k and ε, and boundary conditions for k, ε and velocity.
• Code Validation Benchmarks: Flow between parallel plates, driven cavity Re 100 to 10,000, thermal driven cavity, closed cavity up to Ra 10^6, turbulent channel flow, with detailed discussion of grid dependence and false convergence.
• Parametric Studies on Rooms (Chapter 6): Effect of Reynolds number, Archimedes number, aspect ratio (AR), inlet/outlet size and location, furniture and obstacles, warm jets vs cold jets, jet throw, and formation of stagnant zones.
• Contaminant Transport: How source location changes Cmax from 21 to 142, and why placing sources near the extract or main stream is optimal.
• Real Office Case Studies (3x4x3 m): 27 l/s for 2 persons (1 smoker), displacement vs mixing ventilation at ΔT = 5K and 10K, with full PMV contour evaluation and the 80% comfort criterion.
• 3D Effects: 20x20x20 simulations showing why 2D stagnant zones become high-speed separation zones in 3D.
• Chapter 7 - From 1998 to 2026: RNG k-ε, Realizable k-ε, k-ω SST, LES, DES, DNS, OpenFOAM and parallel computing, unstructured and adaptive meshes, AI surrogate models, Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs), real-time CFD for BMS, post-pandemic aerosol dynamics, Wells-Riley quanta model, personalized and stratum ventilation, BIM + Digital Twins + IoT sensors, energy recovery, and modern PIV/LIF validation.

This book is for HVAC engineers, building services engineers, mechanical engineers, CFD researchers, and graduate students who want to understand not just how to run a CFD model, but how to judge whether its results mean a comfortable, healthy, and energy-efficient building.