TR2021-106

Airflow Optimization for Room Air Conditioners


    •  Tanaka, R., Nabi, S., Nonaka, M., "Airflow Optimization for Room Air Conditioners", Building Simulation 2021 Conference, September 2021.
      BibTeX TR2021-106 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Tanaka2021sep,
      • author = {Tanaka, Ryuta and Nabi, Saleh and Nonaka, Mio},
      • title = {Airflow Optimization for Room Air Conditioners},
      • booktitle = {Building Simulation 2021 Conference},
      • year = 2021,
      • month = sep,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2021-106}
      • }
  • Research Areas:

    Applied Physics, Control, Multi-Physical Modeling, Optimization

Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to increase the energy eff ciency of room air conditioners (RAC) while achieving a comfortable indoor space. We pose the problem as a multi-objective optimization problem in which the design variables are the inlet temperature, air speed, and angle. The multi-objective function constitutes of the temperature uniformity of the room and average wind in the room in a region of interest as representative of thermal comfort, and a function of coefficient of performance (COP) as representative of the energy consumption of the RAC. Direct-adjoint-looping (DAL) method is used as the method for optimization, which is a gradient-based method. We also compared and analyzed the effects of various models of RACs on energy savings and comfort.