Issue link: https://resources.randsim.com/i/1449561
At its most fundamental level, a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system includes heat exchangers that heat or cool the air within a facility. Once the air is conditioned by the heat exchangers, the system forces it through a ducting system that distributes it to various locations within a facility. While maintaining a set temperature throughout the building, a negative side effect of this process is that the forced air can also spread germs. The severity of diseases caused by airborne pathogens, including Covid-19 and the flu, has caused many companies to ask if their HVAC systems are negatively impacting the health of the building's occupants, and if they are, what can be done to fix the problem. To determine and optimize airflow, leaders of hospitals, corporate offices, and other facilities are turning to Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), the visual depiction of design performance using numerical methods. This technology empowers organizations to simulate the airflow in their facilities and quickly gain insight into the corresponding germ migration. To perform these critical airflow analyses for customers, Rand Simulation teams with Ansys, a leading developer of engineering simulation software used to predict how designs behave in real-world environments. Examples of these simulations that utilize Ansys software tools include optimizing negative pressure in healthcare room designs to minimize risk of infectious particles escaping the room envelope, the decontamination of virus-positive patient rooms as well as basic airflow, temperature and humidity performance. Gaining this insight is a fundamental step required to identify: ► Current ventilation design flaws ► Root causes of flaws ► Identify modifications necessary to optimize: ■ Employee safety ■ HVAC effectiveness ■ Utility cost control Simulating Airflow with CFD Analysis CFD analysis uses numerical simulation technology to allow visualization of airflow and temperature performance to confirm ventilation effectiveness before construction, equipment purchase, and system implementation. Whether designing the HVAC system for a new building or optimizing one in an existing building (retrofits), a CFD analysis will dramatically speed the process, reduce costs, and improve the results. Companies no longer need to make their best guess about HVAC system performance and later perform costly downstream rework to meet needs, performance guarantees and/or OSHA safety standards. Instead, before construction begins, facilities professionals can sit down with HVAC design experts, whether in-house or external consultants, and use simulation software to test and perfect the HVAC design by: 1. Modeling the airflow through buildings ► Use BIM data ► Simulate a cough or sneeze ► Track the particle progress through the room