ABE, V.C. Determinação de parâmetros de operação de sistema de distribuição de ar frio pelo piso em ambientes de escritórios. 2007. 132 p. Dissertação (Mestrado) - Departamento de Engenharia de Construção Civil da Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2007. Atualmente, um dos principais requisitos para que um ambiente de escritório atenda plenamente às necessidades de uso e ocupação é a flexibilidade, mas com conforto. O sistema de distribuição de ar frio pelo piso (Underfloor Air Distribution System - UFAD) está sendo utilizado nos edifícios de escritórios para garantir a flexibilização integrada do sistema com o mobiliário. Trata-se de um sistema que fornece ar frio proveniente de um plenum, através de difusores localizados nos painéis do piso elevado. Os difusores de ar podem ser ajustados, ou reposicionados pelos próprios usuários dos ambientes, possibilitando o controle das condições térmicas no entorno próximo, de acordo com suas preferências individuais. Embora o sistema de distribuição de ar pelo piso apresente diversas vantagens com relação ao sistema de distribuição de ar convencional, ainda há falta de informações objetivas e diretrizes de projeto padronizadas, havendo a necessidade de realização de mais pesquisas na área. A introdução da Dinâmica dos Fluidos Computacional (Computational Fluid Dynamics - CFD) apresentou uma alternativa para as pesquisas experimentais relacionadas ao estudo do escoamento do ar. Assim, para o desenvolvimento do presente estudo foram utilizados recursos de dinâmica dos fluidos computacional, com o uso do código FLUENT. O objetivo do presente trabalho é apresentar uma estratégia para a determinação dos parâmetros de operação de sistemas de distribuição de ar pelo piso aplicados a ambientes de escritórios. A estratégia baseiase no estabelecimento de inter-relações entre os principais parâmetros que definem o escoamento do ar em ambientes com o sistema de distribuição de ar pelo piso: a vazão de ar insuflado, a temperatura do ar insuflado e a diferença de pressão entre o plenum pressurizado e o interior do ambiente. O emprego da estratégia possibilita que o projetista identifique as diversas combinações entre os parâmetros de operação que resultem numa mesma condição desejada, permitindo assim a escolha da opção mais satisfatória. / ABE, V.C. Determination of operation parameters of rooms with underfloor air distribution system. 2007. 132 p. Dissertation (Master Course) - Departamento de Engenharia de Construção Civil da Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2007. Nowadays, one of the main requirements of an office room to fully attend the use and occupation needs is the flexibility, but with comfort. The underfloor air distribution system is being used in the office buildings to guarantee the integrated flexibility of the system with the furniture layout. The system supplies cooled air to the room from a pressurized plenum, passing through air diffusers located in the raised floor panels. The air diffusers can be adjusted or relocated by the room users themselves, making possible the control of the thermal conditions in their surroundings, according to their individual preferences. Though the underfloor air distribution system presents a lot of advantages with regard to conventional overhead distribution systems, there is still a lack of objective information and standardized guidelines, and the necessity of accomplishment of more researches about the subject. The introduction of Computational Fluid Dynamics presented an alternative for the experimental tests related to the study of airflow in rooms. Thus, for the development of the present study a CFD tool was used, the code FLUENT. The purpose of the present work is to develop a strategy for the determination of the operation parameters of an underfloor air distribution system applied to office rooms. The strategy is based on the establishment of interrelations between the main parameters that define the airflow in rooms with the underfloor air distribution system: the input volume flux, the input air temperature and the pressure difference between underfloor plenum and the room. The use of this strategy enables the designer to identify several combinations of the operation parameters that result in one desired condition, allowing the choice of the most satisfactory option.

This thesis aims at preparing a user-friendly software tool for the prediction and analysis of the noise generated in Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Systems elaborating the standardized prediction formulae and data coming from the research studies. For the analysis portion of the software, different types of indoor noise criteria are introduced and implemented in the software to ease the investigation of the level and the quality of the sound perceived by the occupant in a room through such criteria. General software structure and implementation of HVAC elements are explained by different userinterface samples in the thesis. Several case studies are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the tool prepared in VISUAL BASIC programming language within the scope of the study.

ABE, V.C. Determinação de parâmetros de operação de sistema de distribuição de ar frio pelo piso em ambientes de escritórios. 2007. 132 p. Dissertação (Mestrado) - Departamento de Engenharia de Construção Civil da Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2007. Atualmente, um dos principais requisitos para que um ambiente de escritório atenda plenamente às necessidades de uso e ocupação é a flexibilidade, mas com conforto. O sistema de distribuição de ar frio pelo piso (Underfloor Air Distribution System - UFAD) está sendo utilizado nos edifícios de escritórios para garantir a flexibilização integrada do sistema com o mobiliário. Trata-se de um sistema que fornece ar frio proveniente de um plenum, através de difusores localizados nos painéis do piso elevado. Os difusores de ar podem ser ajustados, ou reposicionados pelos próprios usuários dos ambientes, possibilitando o controle das condições térmicas no entorno próximo, de acordo com suas preferências individuais. Embora o sistema de distribuição de ar pelo piso apresente diversas vantagens com relação ao sistema de distribuição de ar convencional, ainda há falta de informações objetivas e diretrizes de projeto padronizadas, havendo a necessidade de realização de mais pesquisas na área. A introdução da Dinâmica dos Fluidos Computacional (Computational Fluid Dynamics - CFD) apresentou uma alternativa para as pesquisas experimentais relacionadas ao estudo do escoamento do ar. Assim, para o desenvolvimento do presente estudo foram utilizados recursos de dinâmica dos fluidos computacional, com o uso do código FLUENT. O objetivo do presente trabalho é apresentar uma estratégia para a determinação dos parâmetros de operação de sistemas de distribuição de ar pelo piso aplicados a ambientes de escritórios. A estratégia baseiase no estabelecimento de inter-relações entre os principais parâmetros que definem o escoamento do ar em ambientes com o sistema de distribuição de ar pelo piso: a vazão de ar insuflado, a temperatura do ar insuflado e a diferença de pressão entre o plenum pressurizado e o interior do ambiente. O emprego da estratégia possibilita que o projetista identifique as diversas combinações entre os parâmetros de operação que resultem numa mesma condição desejada, permitindo assim a escolha da opção mais satisfatória. / ABE, V.C. Determination of operation parameters of rooms with underfloor air distribution system. 2007. 132 p. Dissertation (Master Course) - Departamento de Engenharia de Construção Civil da Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2007. Nowadays, one of the main requirements of an office room to fully attend the use and occupation needs is the flexibility, but with comfort. The underfloor air distribution system is being used in the office buildings to guarantee the integrated flexibility of the system with the furniture layout. The system supplies cooled air to the room from a pressurized plenum, passing through air diffusers located in the raised floor panels. The air diffusers can be adjusted or relocated by the room users themselves, making possible the control of the thermal conditions in their surroundings, according to their individual preferences. Though the underfloor air distribution system presents a lot of advantages with regard to conventional overhead distribution systems, there is still a lack of objective information and standardized guidelines, and the necessity of accomplishment of more researches about the subject. The introduction of Computational Fluid Dynamics presented an alternative for the experimental tests related to the study of airflow in rooms. Thus, for the development of the present study a CFD tool was used, the code FLUENT. The purpose of the present work is to develop a strategy for the determination of the operation parameters of an underfloor air distribution system applied to office rooms. The strategy is based on the establishment of interrelations between the main parameters that define the airflow in rooms with the underfloor air distribution system: the input volume flux, the input air temperature and the pressure difference between underfloor plenum and the room. The use of this strategy enables the designer to identify several combinations of the operation parameters that result in one desired condition, allowing the choice of the most satisfactory option.

Noise control in the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems is one of the critical design parameters in measuring the occupant comfort. The noise generated by air-handling units propagates through the ducts in the axial as well as transverse direction. Noise radiated in the transverse direction from the duct walls excited by the internal sound field is called the breakout noise. An analytical formulation has been developed in this thesis in order to predict the breakout noise by incorporating three-dimensional effects along with the acoustical and structural wave coupling phenomena. The first step in the breakout noise prediction is to calculate the interior acoustic response and flexural vibration displacement of the compliant walls. Dynamic interaction between the internal acoustic subsystem and flexible structural subsystem has been expressed in terms of the modal characteristics of the uncoupled response of the acoustic and structural sub-systems. Solutions of the inhomogeneous wave equation are rearranged in terms of impedance and mobility, and the equations describing the complete system are expressed in terms of matrices, which result in a compact matrix formulation. Examples of the formulation are a rectangular cavity with one flexible wall and a rectangular cavity with four-flexible walls. The formulation is modified to incorporate complex boundary conditions by means of appropriate Green’s functions. It is implemented for flexible wall duct using the modified cavity Green’s function. Another objective of the present investigation is to understand the coupling phenomenon and its effect on the compliant wall vibration displacement. The developed three-dimensional analytical analysis of the breakout noise is convenient to implement on the computer, and also to extend the sub-system level model to the system level model in order to analyze a complex acoustic-structural system for the breakout noise problem. The extent of coupling is calculated using a transfer factor based on the uncoupled natural frequencies of the acoustic and structural subsystems. It is observed from the free vibration analysis that a coupling between the cavity and the flexible panel exists in the vicinity of an uncoupled acoustic natural frequency. If a strong coupling occurs between an acoustic mode and a panel mode, then damping of structural subsystem would control it. The cavity volume changes stiffness of the panel, which in turn affects noise radiation in the stiffness-controlled region. The second step is to calculate the sound power radiated from complaint wall. The wall vibration velocity is a linear combination of the uncoupled flexural modes of the structural subsystem. It is substituted into the Rayleigh integral and Kirchhoff– Helmholtz (KH) integral formulation to predict the sound pressure radiated by the vibrating duct wall. The radiated sound power can be obtained by integrating the acoustic intensity over the surface of the flexible duct wall making use of appropriate expressions for radiation impedance. The radiation impedance terms involve a quadruple integral. Evaluation of this integral is quite complex and poses formidable computational challenges. These have been overcome by means of a co-ordinate transformation. Sound power radiation from flexible walls of the plenum and duct walls has been calculated using an equivalent plate model. Analytical results are corroborated with numerical models. The second part of thesis deals with a one-dimensional model to predict the breakout noise from a thin rectangular duct with different end conditions like anechoic termination, rigid-end termination, and the open-end termination. This model incorporates acoustic reflection effects in the duct internal sound field by using standing wave pattern by means of the transfer matrix approach. A one-dimensional prediction method based on the four-pole parameters has been developed to evaluate the lagged duct performance in terms of the breakout noise reduction. Radiation impedance of a duct is calculated by three different methods: (i) finite line source model (ii) finite cylinder model, and (iii) equivalent plate model based on fundamental bending mode of the duct. It is observed that the proposed model that uses the equivalent plate model for the lagged duct and the line source model for the bare duct is appropriate to predict the transverse insertion loss of the lagging, particularly at the lower frequencies that are of primary interest for reducing the breakout noise of rectangular ducts. The bare duct breakout noise results are compared with those of the corresponding 3-D analytical models. It shows that the one-dimensional model captures the overall mean pattern of breakout noise very well. The third part of the thesis examines the internal acoustic field and thence the transmission loss (TL) of a rectangular expansion chamber, the inlet and outlet of which are situated at arbitrary locations of the chamber; i.e., the sidewall or the face of the chamber. The four-pole parameters have been expressed in terms of an appropriate Green’s function of a rectangular cavity with homogeneous boundary conditions. A transfer matrix formulation has been developed for the yielding-wall rectangular chambers by considering structural-acoustic coupling. It may be combined readily with the transfer matrices of the other constituent elements upstream and downstream in order to compute the overall transmission loss or insertion loss. Wherever applicable, parametric studies have been conducted to evolve the design guidelines for minimizing the breakout noise from the HVAC ducts, plenums and cavities.