Application of polyhedral meshing strategy in indoor environment simulation: Model accuracy and computing time

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been proven to be a versatile tool for indoor environment simulations. The discretization of computational domain (mesh generation) determines the reliability of CFD simulation and computational cost. For cases with complex/irregular geometries, the widely utilized tetrahedral meshes have critical limitations, including low accuracy, considerate grid number and computing cost. To overcome these disadvantages, the current research developed a polyhedral meshes based meshing strategy for indoor environment simulations. This study applied tetrahedral, hexahedral and polyhedral meshes for evaluating indoor environment cases developed from previous studies. Simulation accuracy, computing time and physical storage of different mesh types were compared. The results show that the polyhedral meshes could save almost 95% of computing time without sacrificing model accuracy, compared with the other two mesh types with the approximately same grid numbers. Due to its large mesh information, the polyhedral meshes occupied the most physical memory. Overall, the polyhedral meshes based meshing strategy produced a superior performance (model accuracy and computing time) for indoor environment simulations and shows a great potential in engineering applications.