ESTUDO QUALITATIVO DA VENTILAÇÃO NATURAL EM AMBIENTES INTERNOS

UMA ANÁLISE COMPARATIVA DO APLICATIVO DE SMARTPHONE WINDTUNNEL CFD E CFD (ANSYS)

Abstract

Natural ventilation is considered an efficient strategy to control human thermal comfort and reduce buildings' energy consumption. However, it is essential to understand the airflow and the heat transfer characteristics in the initial design phases for this technique's effectiveness. One of the well-known tools for assessing natural ventilation is the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) software. Nevertheless, this tool is complex and has a high cost, making it challenging to incorporate it into project design teaching. Thus, this work aims to evaluate Wind Tunnel CFD's smartphone application as a simplified tool for studying natural ventilation from a qualitative analysis of indoor air distribution by comparing the visual results with the CFD software. The results obtained showed a correspondence between the distribution of the air flows simulated by both tools, which was verified from the analysis of similarity of the image with the aid of an algorithm developed for this information technology. Thus, the device can be considered a useful, accessible, intuitive and didactic tool for simplified analysis of the flow of indoor environments. In addition, it has great potential both for use in academia and in the professional area, especially in the initial stages of the project. It should be noted that the Wind Tunnel CFD has limitations, so the cautious use of the tool is indicated.