Study on indoor thermal environment of office space controlled by cooling panel system using field measurement and the numerical simulation

The purpose of this study was to analyze the performance of a cooling panel system installed in the vertical plane with condensation (hereinafter a cooling panel system) using field measurement and coupled simulation of convection and radiation (CFD). Unlike an all-air cooling system, the cooling panel system could remove the cooling load by convection and radiation. Since the surface temperature of the cooling panel analyzed in this study can be controlled under the dew point, this system is expected to be energy-saving and dehumidifying. In the first step of this study, the indoor thermal environment of the office space, which is air-conditioned by a cooling panel system, was analyzed by field measurement and CFD. By comparing both results, the expected precision of CFD for an indoor space with a cooling panel was examined and the CFD method verified from a practical point of view. In the next step, the thermal environment of the model office space, which is cooled by three types of HVAC system (cooling panel system, all-air cooling system, and hybrid air cooling system composed of cooling panel and natural ventilation), was analyzed using CFD. Installing a human model in the office, the characteristics of heat transportation from the human model were also analyzed. The analysis deals with only sensible heat in this study. The operative temperature in the cooling panel system was lower than that in the all-air cooling system when each of the sensible cooling loads of all types of HVAC system was the same. In conclusion, the cooling panel system was found to be very energy-efficient.