Novel air distribution systems for commercial aircraft cabins

Air distribution systems in commercial aircraft cabins are important for providing a healthy and comfortable environment for passengers and crew. The mixing air distribution systems used in existing aircraft cabins create a uniform air temperature distribution and dilute contaminants in the cabins. The mixing air distribution systems could spread infectious airborne diseases. To improve the air distribution system design for aircraft cabins, this investigation proposed an under-floor displacement air distribution system and a personalized air distribution system. This study first validated a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) program with the experimental data of airflow, air temperature, and tracer-gas concentration from an environmental chamber. Then the validated CFD program was used to calculate the distributions of the air velocity, air temperature, and CO₂ concentration in a section of Boeing 767 aircraft cabin with the mixing, under-floor displacement, and personalized air distribution systems, respectively. By comparing the air and contaminant distributions in the cabin, this study concluded that the personalized air distribution system provided the best air quality without draft risk.     

An under-aisle air distribution system facilitating humidification of commercial aircraft cabins

Air environment in aircraft cabins has long been criticized especially for the dryness of the air within. Low moisture content in cabins is known to be responsible for headache, tiredness and many other non-specific symptoms. In addition, current widely used air distribution systems on airplanes dilute internally generated pollutants by promoting air mixing and thus impose risks of infectious airborne disease transmission. To boost air humidity level while simultaneously restricting air mixing, this investigation uses a validated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) program to design a new under-aisle air distribution system for wide-body aircraft cabins. The new system supplies fully outside, dry air at low momentum through a narrow channel passage along both side cabin walls to middle height of the cabin just beneath the stowage bins, while simultaneously humidified air is supplied through both perforated under aisles. By comparing with the current mixing air distribution system in terms of distribution of relative humidity, CO₂ concentration, velocity, temperature and draught risk, the new system is found being able to improve the relative humidity from the existent 10% to the new level of 20% and lessen the inhaled CO₂ concentration by 30%, without causing moisture condensation on cabin interior and inducing draught risks for passengers. The water consumption rate in air humidification is only around 0.05 kg/h per person, which should be affordable by airliners.     

Novel personalized and humidified air supply for airliner passengers

The micro-environment control in an airliner cabin presented here consists in supplying each of the passengers with her/his own supply of fresh, humidified air in order to prevent possible airborne health problems and to provide local compensation for the humidity deficit. Unlike the environment control systems widely used in commercial aircraft, each of the seats in the cabin will be supplied individually with a separate airflow, which is also separately exhausted. This arrangement forms a personalized microclimate in the seat area. Essentially, focusing a personal air supply into the breathing area of the passenger works on the principle of individual seat ventilation, with the air supply and exhaust nozzles built into the back of the seat ahead. The system design, originally based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models, has been verified by means of laboratory experiments. The results presented here have been achieved within the framework of FP6 EU Project AST5-CT-2006-030958, under the acronym SEAT (www.seat-project.org).     

Flow impact of an air conditioner to portable air cleaning

In order to reduce indoor pollutant exposure, people become increasingly interested in portable air cleaning devices, which can be positioned with flexibility. Such purification devices usually discharge cleaned air with strong momentum, which can interrupt indoor airflow created by air-conditioning units. If a well-organized air circulation to a portable air cleaner is not achieved, indoor air purification cannot be fully ensured. This study has used both measurement and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling to investigate the flow interaction between an air conditioner and a portable air cleaner to purify indoor gaseous pollutants. A workshop environment conditioned by an air conditioner and cleaned by a portable air cleaner was mimicked in an environmental chamber to obtain data for validation of a CFD program. Then CFD was applied to evaluate factors that may affect air purification including: positioning of the air conditioner and air cleaner, air conditioner diffuser types, air-conditioning cooling or heating running mode, and location of pollutant sources. The study finds the simulation results are in good agreement with the corresponding experimental data. The positioning coordination of an air conditioner and an air cleaner, and selection of air conditioner diffuser types shall assure a good air circulation cycle to the air cleaner to improve air purification efficacy. In addition to the cleaner effectiveness, it is also recommended to evaluate an air cleaning device in terms of the absolute pollutant concentration, if the portable air cleaner is under the interaction of an air conditioner and the local performance data are interested.     

一种卷烟厂高架库空调系统气流组织的优化的探索

以杭州地区某一高架库为例,基于高架库的负荷分布特点以及平面布局,提出较好地满足高架库室内参数均匀性要求的气流组织形式:下部侧送+上部顶送、车间中部和上部回风,然后根据负荷分布位置的不同来分配送风量。采用CFD手段对上下层不同风量比例时的气流组织进行模拟分析,分析表明,上下层风管的设计送风量比例为:夏季为1.783:1,冬季为3.178:1,可以很好地满足室内设计要求。     

Dispersion of exhaled droplet nuclei in a two-bed hospital ward with three different ventilation systems

Effective ventilation in general hospital wards is important for controlling the airborne transmission of infectious respiratory diseases. Experiments have been carried out to increase our understanding of the interaction of the breathing flows of two individuals in a full-scale experimental hospital ward with three ventilation systems, i.e. mixing, downward and displacement ventilation. Two life-size breathing thermal manikins were used to simulate a source patient and a receiving patient. The exhalation jet from a bed-lying manikin was visualized using smoke. N2O was used as tracer gas to simulate the droplet nuclei exhaled by patients; and the spatial distribution of its concentrations was measured. Our experimental results show that for both mixing and downward ventilation, the exhaled jet penetrates a short distance and is diluted quickly by ventilation air. The exhaled droplet nuclei are well mixed in the ward. Bed distance does not affect the personal exposure of the receiving patient. For displacement ventilation, the exhaled jet can penetrate a long distance. A high concentration layer of exhaled droplet nuclei because of thermal stratification locking has also been observed with displacement ventilation. This work is useful for identifying an appropriate ventilation method that can remove droplet nuclei more effectively and minimize the risk of cross-infections in a hospital ward environment. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: As one of the major potential sources for infectious droplet nuclei in a hospital environment, exhalation flows of an infected patient can interact with the respiratory activities of other close individuals and with the room ventilation systems. Our latest results provide information on the penetration of exhalation jets into the ambient environment in different ventilation systems. This work is useful in identifying an appropriate and effective ventilation method for removing droplet nuclei more effectively, and thus minimizing the risk of cross-infections in hospital wards with multiple beds.     

Evaluating emergency ventilation strategies under different contaminant source locations and evacuation modes by efficiency factor of contaminant source (EFCS)

Emergency ventilation plays an important role in protecting occupants when a hazardous contaminant is released indoors. A number of studies have been conducted to better understand how to protect indoor occupants with effective ventilation strategies. However, little attention has been paid to the impact of the non-uniform and time-dependent distribution of occupants during evacuation. A new concept, Efficiency Factor of Contaminant Source (EFCS), has recently been proposed to evaluate the performance of emergency ventilation by comprehensively considering the spatial and temporal distributions of both the contaminant and occupants. This paper aims to: (1) propose and demonstrate a procedure for determining an optimal ventilation strategy by using EFCS; (2) examine the effects of source locations, ventilation modes, and evacuation modes on the performance of emergency ventilation. One hundred cases with ten ventilation modes, two evacuation modes, and five source locations were investigated numerically. The results show that the EFCS concept can provide a reasonable way to evaluate the performance of emergency ventilation. The threats of different source locations may vary over a large range, and certain measures should be taken to monitor and prevent the releases at high threat locations. A system equipped with multiple ventilation modes is necessary since no universal ventilation mode can successfully mitigate all hazardous situations. The effects of an evacuation mode may be more significant than that of a ventilation mode under certain situations.     

室内空气分布的预测方法及比较

简要介绍了预测通风空调房间空气分布的散流公式Zonal Model,计算流体力学（CFD）,模型实验4种方法,并从所预测工况的几何形状复杂程度,适用范围,对经验理论的依赖程度,预测成本的大小,预测周期的长短 ,预测资料的完备性,预测结果的可靠性以及使用的方便性等方面进行了对比,提出了这4种预测方法的使用场合。     

Comparison and further development of parametric tropical cyclone models for storm surge modelling

Cyclone forced storm surges cause severe damage to coastal structures and loss of human lives and properties. In cyclone protection and warning it is important to be able to calculate the cyclone air pressure and wind field on the basis of rather limited information, such as cyclone position, pressure drop, maximum wind speed and radius to maximum wind speed. In the present work, parametric cyclone models based on such limited information are investigated and compared. Analytical expressions of the tangential and radial velocity distributions are derived from the governing momentum equations. It is found that the analytical models provide very similar air pressure and tangential wind speed distributions. Instead of using a simple formulation of the deflection angle, the derived analytical expression of the radial velocity distribution is used and compared to earlier numerical solutions. A procedure is formulated for estimation of the shape of the cyclone on the basis of maximum wind speed versus pressure drop relations. Finally, examples of comparisons of measured and calculated air pressures and wind speeds and directions are presented.     

Comparison of molecular and total ATP-based analytical methods with culture for the analysis of bioaerosols

The microbial content of indoor air is an increasingly important issue. High microbial load is associated with various adverse health effects, such as infectious disease, asthma, and toxicosis. The most commonly applied method for analyzing airborne microorganisms is a six-stage Anderson microbiological impactor and subsequent cultivation on agar plates. However, such culture can take several days to produce results, and only a small proportion of viable microorganisms are culturable. Thus, cultivation cannot rapidly identify the degree of health risk or fully characterize microbial communities related to adverse health effects. We sampled bioaerosols using both a high volume SpinCon sampler and a six-stage Andersen microbial impactor. These samples were assayed by culturing, real-time TaqMan PCR, and ATP bioluminescence. We found a significant positive association between real-time TaqMan and cultivation, but not between total ATP and cultivation. Thus, a real-time TaqMan PCR assay could be used in place of cultivation to assess microbial air quality. Finally, when microbial communities were characterized using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and principal component analysis (PCA), a seasonal clustering of microbial profiles was observed.     

Simulation of air flow in the IEA Annex 20 test room—validation of a simplified model for the nozzle diffuser in isothermal test cases

The modeling of air supply devices has been identified from the International Energy Agency (IEA) Annex 20 project as one of the most important problems in applying computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to predict air flow pattern and air distribution in buildings, and the complicated HESCO nozzle diffuser used in the IEA Annex 20 test room has been proved to be particularly difficult to model. In a previous study, a simplified model for this diffuser was developed and validated against experimental data. It has been shown that this model can yield good prediction for the wall jet flow issued from the diffuser, but whether this model is capable of correctly predicting the global flow pattern in the whole test room was not known. In this paper, the benchmark data of the IEA Annex 20 Test Cases B2 and B3 were used to evaluate the performance of the model for the prediction of the global air flow pattern in the test room. It was demonstrated that this model can predict the air flow pattern in the whole test room for both the Test Cases B2 and B3 with reasonable accuracy. The significance of a velocity correction when comparing the numerical prediction with experimental data obtained using omni-directional anemometers was also discussed.     

Comparison of annual energy performances with different ventilation methods for cooling

Stratum ventilation has been proposed to cope for elevated indoor temperatures recommended by governments in East Asia. TRNSYS is used for computation of the space cooling load and system energy consumption. Typical configurations of an office, a classroom and a retail shop in Hong Kong are investigated. Compared with mixing ventilation and displacement ventilation, stratum ventilation derives its energy saving potential largely from the following three factors: the reduction in ventilation and transmission loads and increased COP of chillers. The year-round energy saving is found to be substantial at 25% and 44% at least when compared with displacement ventilation and mixing ventilation, respectively.     

Determination of particle concentration in the breathing zone for four different types of office ventilation systems

Many factors affect the airflow patterns, thermal comfort, contaminant removal efficiency and indoor air quality at individual workstations in office buildings. In this study, four ventilation systems were used in a test chamber designed to represent an area of a typical office building floor and reproduce the real characteristics of a modern office space. Measurements of particle concentration and thermal parameters (temperature and velocity) were carried out for each of the following types of ventilation systems: (a) conventional air distribution system with ceiling supply and return; (b) conventional air distribution system with ceiling supply and return near the floor; (c) underfloor air distribution system; and (d) split system. The measurements aimed to analyse the particle removal efficiency in the breathing zone and the impact of particle concentration on an individual at the workstation. The efficiency of the ventilation system was analysed by measuring particle size and concentration, ventilation effectiveness and the indoor/outdoor ratio. Each ventilation system showed different airflow patterns and the efficiency of each ventilation system in the removal of the particles in the breathing zone showed no correlation with particle size and the various methods of analyses used.     

Comparison of machine learning methods for ground settlement prediction with different tunneling datasets

This study integrates different machine learning (ML) methods and 5-fold cross-validation (CV) method to estimate the ground maximal surface settlement (MSS) induced by tunneling. We further investigate the applicability of artificial intelligent (AI) based prediction through a comparative study of two tunnelling datasets with different sizes and features. Four different ML approaches, including support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), back-propagation neural network (BPNN), and deep neural network (DNN), are utilized. Two techniques, i.e. particle swarm optimization (PSO) and grid search (GS) methods, are adopted for hyperparameter optimization. To assess the reliability and efficiency of the predictions, three performance evaluation indicators, including the mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE), and Pearson correlation coefficient (R), are calculated. Our results indicate that proposed models can accurately and efficiently predict the settlement, while the RF model outperforms the other three methods on both datasets. The difference in model performance on two datasets (Datasets A and B) reveals the importance of data quality and quantity. Sensitivity analysis indicates that Dataset A is more significantly affected by geological conditions, while geometric characteristics play a more dominant role on Dataset B.     

Investigation of air quality,comfort parameters and effectiveness for two floor-level air supply systems in classrooms

The method of distributing the outdoor air in classrooms has a major impact on indoor air quality and thermal comfort of pupils. In a previous study, ([11] Karimipanah T, Sandberg M, Awbi HB. A comparative study of different air distribution systems in a classroom. In: Proceedings of Roomvent 2000, vol. II, Reading, UK, 2000. p. 1013–18; [13] Karimipanah T, Sandberg M, Awbi HB, Blomqvist C. Effectiveness of confluent jets ventilation system for classrooms. In: Idoor Air 2005, Beijing, China, 2005 (to be presented).) presented results for four and two types of air distribution systems tested in a purpose built classroom with simulated occupancy as well as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling.     

Comparison of annual energy performances with different ventilation methods for temperature and humidity control

Stratum ventilation has been proposed to accommodate elevated indoor temperatures recommended by governments in East Asia. TRNSYS is used for computation of the space cooling loads, sensible and latent, as well as system energy consumption. Typical configurations of an office, a classroom and a retail shop in Hong Kong are investigated. Desiccant dehumidification with and without solar assistance is utilized for the air treatment under displacement ventilation and stratum ventilation, while simple reheating is adopted under mixed ventilation. Compared with mixing ventilation and displacement ventilation, stratum ventilation derives its energy saving potential largely from the following five factors: the reduction in ventilation, dehumidification and transmission loads, prolonged free cooling period and increased the COP of the chillers. For the office, the year-round energy saving is found to be substantial at 20% and 40% without the need for solar energy provision when compared with displacement ventilation and mixing ventilation respectively. For the classroom and retail shop, the year-round energy saving is at about 25% and at least 37% with the aid of solar energy provision when compared with displacement ventilation and mixing ventilation respectively.     

几种非平稳分析方法对非平稳风力时程的比较分析

非平稳信号的分析方法是信号分析领域中的一个重要问题。本文以风洞试验获得的非平稳风压信号和升力系数信号为研究对象,分别采用短时傅里叶变换、Wigner-Ville分布,小波变换方法和Hilbert-Huang变换(HHT)方法对信号进行时频分析。分析结果表明,由于短时傅里叶变换、Wigner-Ville分布,小波变换方法都是基于傅里叶变换,因此,得到的频谱特性都大致相同,只是在分析的精细程度上有所差异;HHT方法可以获得有意义的瞬时频率,从而给出频率随时间变化的精确表达,信号最终被表示为时频平面上的能量分布,成为Hilbert谱,该方法适用于分析生活中普遍存在的大量频率随时间变化的非线性、非平稳信号,可将复杂的信号直接分离成从高频到低频的若干阶固有模态函数。另一方面,无论用哪一种分析方法都可以看出,风速和风压信号的能量大多分布在低频部分,高频部分所占比例很少,而升力信号的能量大多分布在高频部分,低频部分所占比例很少。本文采用HHT方法提取起控制作用的信号主成分。     

Comparison of thermal performance between test cells with different coverage systems for experimental typical day of heat in Brazilian Southeastern

This article shows experimentally the thermal performance of two test cells with different coverage systems, Light Green Roof (LGR) and ceramic roof by analyzing internal surface temperatures (IST) in the ceiling and dry bulb temperatures (DBT). The objective was to evaluate the spatial distribution of temperatures in buildings according to spatial and temporal Dynamic Climatology approaches. An experimental, typical day for heat conditions was determined. The data of the main climatic variables provided by an automatic weather station and temperatures inside the test cells were collected using thermocouples installed such that the entire space is included. The results led to the conclusion that the LGR has a balanced IST and DBT spatial distribution compared with ceramic roofs. Nevertheless, the analysis of the thermal performance is only one of the variables that must be considered when developing a construction proposal that is adapted to the context. The manner in which the thermocouples were placed inside the test cells also showed the importance of specifying the location of the sensors in experimental studies on the behavior and thermal performance of buildings.