Czech Technical University in Prague

Professor Frantisek Drkal
www.cvut.cz
drkal@fsid.cvut.cz

The Department of Environmental Engineering has been involved in computer modelling and simulation (CMS) of buildings and HVAC systems since 1994. This activity comprises of building performance (energy and comfort) simulations using mostly the ESP-r software and CFD simulations of indoor air flow using ‘ Fluent’ software.

In 1998-2001 DEE was in charge of the task ‘Validation of CFD developments using an experimental room’ within the international INCO-Copernicus project ‘Integrated Design Optimisation of Building Energy Performance and Indoor Environment’.

A laboratory test room was built and equipped with air-conditioning and systems for the measurement of air temperatures, air velocities and tracer-gas concentrations. The aim of the task was to validate the newly developed CFD module of the ESP-r software in a number of tests. These tests showed very close comparison between the experimentally obtained results and the simulations.

The CFD developments and validation work were presented in 2001 at Clima 2000 in Napoli and Building Simulation in Rio de Janeiro and in the journal Building and Environment (vol 37, 2002).

Using CMS technique, DEE elaborated over 15 successful studies concerning HVAC systems, indoor environment and indoor air flow for important building projects in Prague. For the purpose of building energy simulations DEE also developed a TRY climate database for Prague from the meteorological data collected over 14-year period.