CFD analysis of non-uniform thermal comfort and energy efficiency in hybrid air-conditioning systems

Recently, hybrid air-conditioning systems have been proposed and applied to achieve building energy savings. However, few research works have been conducted on the non-uniformity of thermal comfort in such hybrid air-conditioning systems. In this paper, both energy efficiency and non-uniform thermal comfort of various air-conditioning systems, including hybrid systems, were evaluated in a typical office room using coupled simulation of computation fluid dynamics, radiation model and a human thermal model. Energy efficiency was evaluated from the primary energy consumption, which is required to satisfy the predicted mean vote value. The non-uniformity of thermal comfort was evaluated from the deviation of surface temperature of human thermal model. Flow fields and temperature distribution in each case were represented. Furthermore, system energy consumption and predicted mean vote of human thermal model for each case were used in the evaluation of results.