Author: Caesar Wiratama
Abstract
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is increasingly used in HVAC design to evaluate airflow distribution, thermal comfort, and ventilation effectiveness. However, the complexity of OpenFOAM case setup often limits its adoption in practical HVAC applications. This study presents an HVAC CFD simulation framework based on OpenFOAM using the tensorHVAC template, which standardizes mesh generation, numerical schemes, and solver settings for indoor airflow analysis. A small café with three occupants was investigated as a case study. The simulations employed blockMesh and snappyHexMesh for grid generation, the buoyantSimpleFoam solver for buoyancy-driven flow, and the k-ω SST turbulence model. Indoor airflow and thermal performance were evaluated using velocity, temperature, Draft Rate, Predicted Mean Vote, Predicted Percentage Dissatisfied, and air age. Numerical convergence was achieved at approximately 1,000 iterations, while simulations were extended to 5,000 iterations to ensure fully developed and well-distributed temperature fields. The results demonstrate that the tensorHVAC template provides a robust and practical workflow for HVAC CFD simulations, enabling reliable assessment of thermal comfort and ventilation performance with reduced setup complexity.
