2025-02-12 Room ventilation conditions highlighted in fluid dynamics course
In addition to the excursion to the waste water plant in Strass in Zillertal, our third-semester students were also able to deepen their lecture hall experience in the practical implementation field last week: lecturer Manuel Berger dedicated a day to the implementation of fluid dynamic concepts in the laboratory and IT environment.
The students of Smart Building Technologies were able to investigate the flow in lecture hall 4A-024 at the MCI Campus Technology & Life Sciences experimentally and simulatively and carry out simulations to improve ventilation.
Guided by Manuel Berger, the students were able to use LDA (Laser Doppler Anemometry) to non-invasively determine the velocity with stationary boundary conditions in a 1:100 scale model using laser optics. For local positioning, a robot and a RobotStudio plugin were used, which was developed by MCI graduates Johannes Sieberer (graduate of the MCI master's programs Medical & Sports Technologies and Industrial Engineering & Management) and MCI employee Thomas Hausberger (Department of Mechatronics) and made this investigation possible in the first place.
The results of the laboratory exercise show that flow simulations based on the finite volume method fit very well with the LDA measurements. In addition, the room was simulated in its original size. The Reynolds similarity theory could be confirmed with the simulation, so that investigations on a scale of 1:100 are permissible. In the laboratory environment, the students were able to measure the real conditions and simulate suggestions for improvement using the model without compromising measurement results by being present in the real lecture hall.
The course would like to thank Manuel Berger for his diverse teaching methods with practical approaches for our students.
In the lecture hall simulation, the lecture hall windows are set on a horizontal sectional plane - the inlet and outlet velocity can each be displayed here as a vector variable. This makes it clear how quickly the air exchange takes place at these opening points. This illustration shows the air exchange in the entire plane between the two opening points. © MCI / Manuel Berger"> In the lecture hall simulation, the lecture hall windows are set on a horizontal sectional plane - the inlet and outlet velocity can each be displayed here as a vector variable. This makes it clear how quickly the air exchange takes place at these opening points. This illustration shows the air exchange in the entire plane between the two opening points. © MCI / Manuel Berger
Final simulation evaluation in the computer room: The Ansys Fluent software illustrates the different levels of the room - the students, pictured here from left to right Eva Voppichler, Sarah Maria Grepl and Peter Hornich, evaluate individual measuring points at different heights. Depending on the position on the z-axis (height of the room), a differentiated image of the flow rate in the room can be visualized. The velocity is used as an indicator of the volume flow at individual points in the measured room. © MCI / Manuel Berger
In the laboratory environment, the students evaluate the turbulent flow - the fluid, the liquid in the air, is an unstable variable and is therefore subject to constant changes over time. The evaluation of the turbulent flow is partly automated by the non-invasive LDA software - the droplet velocity in the air is measured at individual points and used to derive how good the ventilation in the room is (velocity distribution of the droplets in the air). © MCI / Manuel Berger
In the lecture hall simulation, the lecture hall windows are set on a horizontal sectional plane - the inlet and outlet velocity can each be displayed here as a vector variable. This makes it clear how quickly the air exchange takes place at these opening points. This illustration shows the air exchange in the entire plane between the two opening points. © MCI / Manuel Berger"> 
