Thermal Comfort Simulation for Manufacturing Plants

Manufacturing processes often produce a large amount of heat, which needs to be pumped out of the factory to maintain thermal stability and comfort. Thermal comfort is essential to maintain a suitable working environment in a factory. It has a strong impact on the health and productivity of workers. In addition, it is mandatory to keep the working environment within specified thermal and relative humidity ranges. Periodic assessments of these thermal parameters is routine in most factories. Inclusion of additional manufacturing equipment or processes can lead to a significant change in the working environment and consequent comfort, this needs to be addressed quickly. Rather than wait to measure these effects it is preferable to develop a reliable simulation method for the proactive study and improvement of thermal comfort levels. A reliable simulation approach is developed in this study for the prediction of thermal comfort in an automotive manufacturing plant. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models along with on-site measurement data are used in this study to predict temperature distribution across the factory floor. Rectangular machine bounding boxes with an average measured temperature are used to represent individual machines. Further, the solar load with respect to plant location and roof thermal insulation have been considered in this study. The simulation approach presented correlates well with the measurements made as part of this study. This underscores the predictive validity of the approach.