SimScale Handles ASHRAE Standard 55 Thermal Comfort Assessment

This week we learned about the German software company, SimScale, whose web-based engineering software can be utilized across platforms and devices. Their software is embracing Parasolids and HOOPS Exchange technology and you can read more about that here.

Simulating Thermal Comfort in Buildings

In looking through their blog we found an interesting case study titled, “ASHRAE Standard 55 Thermal Comfort Assessment with Simulation.” 

Key Takeaways

HVAC engineers typically have not used CFD software to design their systems or meet ASHRAE Standard 55 this way due to the high cost of such software and the intensive computing needs behind it. But SimScale puts this functionality into cloud-compute and offers affordable access via subscription. This is game-changing. 

The ASHRAE 55 standard has been in existence since 1966 and is the most recognized model in thermal comfort research. Occupant comfort in rooms, particularly large spaces, can be challenging for HVAC engineers to achieve evenly.

Enter SimScale. The company’s simulation technology can allow an engineer to simulate and validate designs for thermal comfort against the ASHRAE 55 standard. Engineers today typically rely on hand calculations or calculations in software, to comply with ASHRAE 55. But computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations allow engineers to virtually test and optimize their HVAC system designs in the early stages of their work.

The CFD simulation analyzes and visualizes the airflow velocity and direction, the air temperature, and the effective draft temperature (EDT), which combines the velocity and the temperature data. The blog post features a test case large theater design and two design options are compared. (see images above). You can read the whole blog here and see more images of their software.

SimScale offers CFD, FEA, and thermal analysis, all on one platform. To learn more about SimScale go here.

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