User comfort in a laboratory assessed though CFD simulation

Ventilation in industrial laboratories must guarantee the safety of operators as well as their aeraulic and thermal comfort to allow the prolonged use of equipment. The laboratory presented here contains several fume hoods with their own suction system, as well as a centralized ventilation system running through the entire room. The extraction is thus done at the level of the fume hoods as well as by a sheath. Blowing also takes place via a duct passing through each room. This laboratory being under construction, CFD numerical simulations were used here to help define the ventilation system to be implemented as well as to assess the comfort of the users of the room. The nature of the blowing duct (perforated duct or duct equipped with diffusers) was thus chosen according to the comfort criteria defined by the Fanger model or DR model (for Draft Rate). This model is based on a semi-empirical formulation to determine the percentage of people bothered by the airflow in a room. The performance of the ventilation system was also estimated according to the occupation of the premises and the activity in progress, in particular the opening or closing of the fume hoods.