Flow regimes in an air conditioned measuring equipment laboratory

The present work was dedicated to the development and introduction of the flow heat transfer interactions on the air flow in Precision Measuring Equipment Laboratories (PMEL). Many PMELs built or renovated in recent years have not met minimum operating environment standards. Measuring instruments need to be calibrated from time to time to provide high accuracy in use, which occurs by comparing a measuring device (un-calibrated) against an equal or better standard. The impact of flow parameters and factors (such as the configuration factors, flow conditions…) on the air flow pattern were investigated. This current research was employed with the aim for more comprehensive knowledge of flow characteristics in both isothermal and non-isothermal air flow movements in the room. This offers the designer a better view of design limits to enable him to adequately select the optimum design from a wide number of alternative options and to use them in forecasting and even monitoring. Air movement inside enclosures prediction via CFD is a strong tool for reaching better designs for inlets and outlets positions in ventilated spaces. A ready available commercial Fluent Computational code was used to predict the air flow patterns and thermal behavior. The present work made use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation techniques that solved the continuity, momentum, energy, and species transport equations in addition to k-epsilon model equations for turbulence closure. The SIMPLE algorithm is used for the pressure-velocity coupling. Mesh sizes used in the present work exceeded 700,000 mesh volumes in one case, and all mesh sizes were above 600,000 mesh volumes which allowed better and meaningful predictions of the flow regimes.