Modification and application of zonal method with power law in predicting the developed flow field inside a real scale space

Investigating the flow pattern developed whitin spaces with relatively large scales that can be caused by forced or natural convection is of particular importance based on which, one can comment on the spread of polluting particles, temperature distribution and thermal comfort conditions. Calculating the developed flow field whitin such spaces using numerical methods, requires relatively large memory and long calculation time. Whereas, suitable zonal methods can predict accurate flow patterns with a very small amount of calculations. In the present research, equations similar to that of one-dimensional flow passing through an orifice, which is known as the zonal power law method, were used to predict the flow between the adjacent cells. These equations along with the mass conservation equation defined for each cell of the domain were solved using an innovative numerical method and the velocity distribution was specified. The 2-D sample domain had 1 m height and two different lengths of 0.5 and 2 m where the air inlet and outlet were considered at different positions. The air velocity at the inlet was 2 m/s. In order to make a better match with the experimental results, variable loss coefficients between the cells were used and significant improvement was found in the results. Despite the comformity made in the velocity distribution, the existence of recirculating flows predicted by the numerical methods could not be obtained using the employed method even with the variable coefficients.