Abstract:
Ceiling fans are a popular means of providing
thermal comfort to occupants in an indoor environment,
mainly in tropical countries and it contributes to a significant
portion of annual energy consumption throughout the world.
It is proven that using ceiling fans in conjunction with air
conditioners in an air-conditioned environment can lead to
higher thermal comfort at a lower cost of energy which will in
turn increase the popularity of the ceiling fans in near future.
Understanding the proper flow field around a rotating ceiling
fan can lead to design more efficient fan blades, which can
lead to significant energy savings. Analyzing these using
experimental methods is both a tedious and a costly task. By
using numerical methods, this can be achieved at a significant
lower cost and effort. For such analyses, CFD methods using
RANS equations are widely used for both indoor and outdoor
conditions. For this purpose, numerous turbulence models are
available, each of which would more accurately predict some
cases than others. Therefore, Standard KE, Standard KW,
RNG KE and Spalart Allmaras model is evaluated for a case
of efficiency assessment of ceiling fans and SA model was
found as the most accurate model with just 1.9% NRMSD
with experimentally calculated values.
