Simulation of the warm-up process in a room heated by a split-type air conditioner

A complex coupling between the air conditioning system and the indoor environment is involved in the warm-up process. Previous research has often employed the well-mixing assumption or fixed boundary conditions of supply air temperature and velocity in simulations of the warm-up process. While these assumptions facilitate model simplification, they neglect critical details regarding indoor thermal comfort and air conditioning energy consumption. To address these missing details, this study integrates the thermodynamic model of the air conditioning system with a CFD model of the indoor environment, thereby establishing a coupled model for simulating the warm-up process. The results demonstrate that this coupled model yields consistency with experimental data. Additionally, the results reveal that an identical air conditioning system can exhibit divergent responses in uniform versus non-uniform environments, underscoring the potential necessity of incorporating detailed airflow pattern information in developing control strategies. © Reykjavik University.