The upgraded software features enhancements in heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) model creation, solution performance, and results visualization. According to Mentor Graphics, these improvements will help users who build environments, data centers, and clean rooms to quickly set up build scenarios and accurately analyze them for proper cooling, heating, contamination control, and ventilation. The result is higher productivity for the designer and the ability to run more “what-if” variants, thus converging on the best design possible.

This airflow plot traces the path of conditioned air with color indicating air speed from a floor-standing HVAC system to all corners of a large warehouse. Image courtesy of Mestex, Inc.

FloVENT software is a CFD product that predicts 3D airflow, heat transfer, and contamination distribution in buildings of all types and sizes. The tool’s menu system is designed specifically for engineers involved in the design and optimization of built environments and HVAC systems. Typical applications include atriums, shopping malls, office buildings, telephone exchanges, and data centers, theaters, airport terminals, storage facilities and warehouses, passenger comfort in vehicles, air quality and contaminant control in laboratories, research facilities, hospitals, and underground parking lots. The software helps you minimize energy consumption as well as eliminate airflow problems or hazards early in the design process before building construction or refurbishment begins.

Key enhancements include:
• The “Zoom-In” feature helps you select a region of a model and create a more complex micro-model for that section, including boundary conditions from previous analyses. Then a  more detailed study can be performed on that section without carrying the overhead of the full-system level model.

• An improved radiative exchange factor solver results in up to a 40X improvement in execution times for larger design models. This helps reduce the time required to calculate the effects of radiative heat exchange.

• A “Cold and Hot Aisle Capture Index” can help you efficiently analyze the cooling performance in data centers containing models of racks, local cooling resources (e.g. perforated floor tiles or local coolers), and local air extracts (e.g., return vents).

Mentor Graphics
www.mentor.com

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