Review of underfloor air distribution technology

Underfloor air distribution (UFAD) system, which is a relative new method of providing conditioned air and ventilation to the commercial buildings and data centers, is focused by researchers and designers for its potential advantages of better indoor thermal comfort (ITC) and indoor air quality (IAQ), layout flexibility, reduced life cycle costs, and energy saving. However, the application of UFAD system are still obstructed by the gap in the fundamental understanding of some new elements, such as the cooling load calculation, control of the thermal stratification, and evaluation of energy consumption. This paper reviews the current situation of UFAD technology, and the existing problems in recent researches are summarized. To improve the performance of UFAD system, several possible directions for the further studies are suggested.