In order to assist with designing effective design conditions, we use in-house computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and other design tools to simulate airflows and heat transfer within buildings. CFD enables us to model how airflows and heat transfer will be affected by different design approaches. This knowledge enables us to design tailor-made concepts fully suited to every specific situation.
We have written some blogs on how CFD is used.
Know-how
We have gathered a lot of experience in modelling a variety of different challenges in ventilation design in a wide variety of buildings and situations, for example:
Validation
Measurement of the actual performance of the installed equipment is a key element to verify the accuracy of the “digital prediction”. We are able to compare the predicted results from CFD modelling with empirical test results on Colt products carried out in our own R&D centre.
We have also verified our own CFD modelling with project-specific testing. Read about our full-scale hot smoke tests in a simulated car park in Middlesbrough for Liverpool One.
CFD packages
We use Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), AutoDesk Simulation and our own in-house developed Orca with FloVENT (see below). Each has its own features and benefits. We select the appropriate package to suit the project requirements.
All of this gives you, the customer, peace of mind that our modelling is robust and based on real life situations.
Up to recently it required one of our small team of highly skilled CFD engineers to input the data correctly and use the CFD programs, which created a bottleneck. We developed Orca so as to resolve this issue, creating a simple, easy-to-use interface that anyone designing a ventilation scheme could use.
This exceptional tool enables us to provide our customers with a basic CFD model much faster than hitherto – a typical calculation time is around 2 hours.
Our gallery shows a selection of CFD images from a wide variety of building types.
