Coupled Conduction, Convection, Radiation Heat Transfer with Simultaneous Mass Transfer in Ice Rinks

ABSTRACT

This article presents numerical predictions of velocity, temperature, and absolute humidity distributions in an indoor ice rink with ventilation and heating. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation includes the effects of radiation between all inside surfaces of the building envelope, turbulent mixed convection, and vapor diffusion, as well as conduction through the walls and condensation on the ice. The net radiative fluxes for each element of the envelope's inside surfaces are calculated with a modified version of Gebhart's method. This modification reduces the calculation time and the memory required to store the radiation view factors for the discretized elements of the inside surfaces of the envelope. The predicted temperatures show very good agreement with measured data. The CFD code also calculates the heat fluxes toward the ice due to convection from the air, to condensation of vapor, and to radiation from the walls and ceiling. It is shown that a low emissivity ceiling reduces the sum of these fluxes and the risk of vapor condensation on the ceiling.