Engineering Solutions

Evolved Anthropology

Ideology of Anthropology

Have you ever wondered why the tables and chairs are designed where the height of it is not too high or too low in order to provide the necessary function and the comfortability that we needed daily?

All these works and designs are thanks to the experts or researchers on the Anthropology study. Anthropology study is one of the odd topics or subjects around the world, yet they are the group who made countless of experiments and studies to ensure that the items are suitable to be used by human, provide comfortability to improve the users’ work performance.

It sounds very ridiculous but let me ask you a question. When you go to the boba milk shop, do you prefer if the shop comes with sofa cushions for you to sit and enjoy the drinks, or do you prefer if the shop comes with very high stool for you to sit, like sitting in the club house? I believe most of the people would choose the first option. Because most of us prefer to enjoy the drink in a comfortable chair, so we can sit longer to socialise with our friends. The other hand, the high stool is more suitable for club houses. The main reason behind this is that the stools are meant to provide a short support when thepeople are dancing in the club houses. Once they feel tired, want to have a short rest, this is when the stool become useful. Each item and furniture is tailored for different situations and applications.

Many studies had been conducted in anthropology research, such as human comfortable height; the comfortable working surroundings and the satisfaction of sitting and resting. The focus of this study is to ensure human feels comfortable when using it. Today, we are going to look into the comfortable temperature for a human, and how engineering solutions can help to improve the human comfort level in a room, not only speed up the testing period and provide a more accurate statistics to provide a better suggestion for improvement.

Human Thermal Comfort

Today, we are going to talk more about human comfortable level within a room. There is an engineering term for this study, known as HVAC flow simulation study. Usually, developers choose to ignore this part because it is time consuming, not cost effective, and they prefer the owner or the unit owner to install their own air ventilation system to manage the temperature within the room by themselves.

This leads to another question, when does HVAC study helps in providing comfort environment for the workers? HVAC study is mostly needed when corporate wanted to setup a manufacturing factory – to study the recommended ventilation system in the factory; to ensure the factory is suitable for workers to work and able to ventilate the gases produced from the production process.

However, HVAC study also required for the developer who is in charge of the smart building. Where the developer wants to study how to install the airduct in the building, so the whole building will have the same temperature and able to control the temperature within the building using smart sensor and IoT system to manage the ventilation flow system.

Factors Manipulate Thermal Comfort

When it comes to HVAC study, this is the term that we need to know – which is the PMV, (Predicted Mean Vote). PMV is a measurement to access or evaluate the heat comfort within the occupied space, it can be affected by several factors in the study process. In extreme situations, if the body failed to maintain the body temperature, subject too hot or too cold, we will start to suffer brain damage, unconsciousness, sometime may lead to cardiac arrest. As mentioned, if we are in the extreme situation or environment. Sometimes, if you’ve been in a very cold room for long periods of time, you may suffer migraine headaches for short periods, it is advised to warm up the environment before it worsens the migraine issue.

These are the several factors that will affect thermal comfort of a human:

1. Air Temperature – the room temperature in the room that will directly affect our body temperature
2. Radiant Temperature – heat energy release in the room, or heat energy release by all the object within the room.
3. Air velocity – the speed of the air moving, usually the main factor, that transfer the heat out of the room or occupied spaces.
4. Relative humidity – humidity caused human to sweat and lose a lot of water vaporised under dry humidity. Higher the humidity, the wetter if feels outside.
5. Clothing insulation – thick clothing causes the skin to sweat a lot as well. Materials of the clothing also will affect the thermal comfort among human subject within the space.

SOLIDWORKS HVAC SIMULATION

Since HVAC falls under the engineering section, the person who conducts study on a building HVAC system must be an engineer and is aware of the concept and knowledge on heat transfer and fluid mechanics. This is where our main course starts to be served on the table.

Fatigue simulation, static simulation and flow simulation have been a common solution used widely in Malaysia. However, when come to HVAC simulation solutions, lack of HVAC project around the domestic market caused the solution to be less used by SOLIDWORKS users.

In order to conduct a HVAC simulation study in SOLIDWORKS, these are the license you are required to have. SOLIDWORKS license as the core license, UI to open any file or modelling in your project. Secondly, Flow Simulation license, as we know that, HVAC involved of movement of air particles affect the heat transfer in the study. Last but not the least, the HVAC license, which consist of complex heat transfer formula in the simulation section. Without any of this licenses, user is unable to conduct any thermal comfort study in the software.

In the simulation study, the software allows you to apply the environment temperature, to include the heat produced by the natural sunlight, and you even can select the faces that exposed to the sunlight.

Materials assigned on the wall to ensure the wall able to absorb to reduce the heat transfer from the sun based on their materials properties. Each material comes with different heat transfer properties, which will greatly affect the whole study process if you choose the wrong materials.

With the air inlet speed, we can define the airflow within the room and how the air ventilates within the room. When there’s an inlet, there will always be an outlet within the room. These are the core criteria condition for HVAC simulation. Unless you perform basic heat transfer study within electronic parts, then it is different story compared to this.

Stimulate the heat energy produced from the object within the room

To present the movement of air particles or ventilation system in the room

After the simulation criteria or condition is setup and ready, the software will take a little bit of time to run the calculation for the result. Once result is ready, the relevant result will come with different color plot to identify the hot area, the air flow, and PMV value in the room.

Stimulate heat radiation, and the heat energy emitted toward buildings

Determine the thermal comfort contour in the occupied room.

Determine the temperature of the subject based on the subject’s position

The effectiveness and the direction of air particles moving

Impact of sun radiation affect the premises temperature