Energy use in buildings account for about one third of the total global energy supply and contributes as much as 30% of the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. It is estimated that energy use in buildings will increase to 67% by 2030. The need for better thermal comfort and air quality in indoor environments is the leading cause for high energy use in buildings.  Heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems take up about 50% of the total energy use in buildings which is about 10-20% of the national energy use in most developed countries. The development and adoption of sustainable ventilation systems is a viable solution to mitigate climate change and curtail carbon emissions. The experimental study was conducted in a room resembling a modern office in a laboratory environment. The study involved investigating the ability of the system to provide cooling and heating. Concentration decay tracer gas technique using Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) gas was used to determine the local air change index and air change efficiency in the room. Low-velocity omni-directional thermistor anemometer type CTA88 were used to measure the air velocity and temperature in the room. Smoke was used to visualise the flow patterns created in the room.  The climate chamber was used to mimic climatic conditions in winter. Fifteen cases were investigated with five air flow rates set points (30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 l/s) at three supply air temperatures, i.e., 17.6 °C, 21.0 °C and 25.3 °C. The results of the local air change index and air change efficiency for the nominal supply temperature of 17.6 °C showed that the system had strong characteristics of a mixing ventilation system. At the supply air temperature of 21.0 °C, the performance of the system deteriorated slightly to below that of a mixing ventilation system and could not satisfactorily provide heating at supply temperature of 25.3 °C. Better performance of the system at all supply air temperature setpoints was observed at lower airflow rates. At all supply air temperature setpoints, relatively higher degree of temperature stratification was observed at lower supply. The draught rate levels decreased with increase in supply air temperature and height. The location of the air inlet terminals in relation to the workstations had significant effect on the performance of the system. The stratum ventilation system did not work efficiently because the air streams were heavily mixed before reaching the occupants.

The simulation of physical systems in the early stages of conceptual designs has shown to be a key factor for adequate decision making and avoiding big and expensive issues downstream in engineering projects. In the case of aircraft cabin design, taking into account the thermal comfort of the passengers as well as the proper air circulation and renovation can make this difference. However, current numerical fluid simulations (CFD) are too computationally expensive for integrating them in early design stages where extensive comparative studies have to be performed. Instead, Zonal Models (ZM) appear to be a fast-computation approach that can provide coarse simulations for aircraft cabin flows. In this thesis, a Zonal Model solver is developed as well as a geometry-definition and meshing framework, both in Matlab®, for performing coarse, flexible and computationally cheap flow simulations of user-defined cabin designs. On one hand, this solver consists of a Fractional Step approach for coarse unstructured bi-dimensional meshes. On the other, the cabin geometry can be introduced by hand for simple shapes, but also with Computational Aided Design tools (CAD) for more complex designs. Additionally, it can be chosen to generate the meshes from scratch or morph them from previously generated ones. / <p>The presentation was online</p>