Experimental validation of the age-of-the-air CFD analysis: A case study

People spend most of their time indoors, thus maintaining a good indoor air quality (IAQ) is essential. To this end, one of the most effective methods to follow is the design of efficient ventilation; for this, the study of the local mean age of air (LMA) parameter is necessary. The objective of this research was to assess the influence of the presence of furniture, through validation of the numerical model CFD. The latter was implemented to calculate LMA in a room with two different furniture arrangements. Prior research on LMA calculation according to the arrangement of the furniture within an enclosure is not found in the literature. The tracer gas concentration decay method was used to develop the experimental analysis. The concordance between the data from the experimentation with those obtained in the numerical analysis was assessed. A greater difference was found in the values of the case with more furniture elements, although there was good agreement. In this study, the influence of the geometry of both the space and the furniture, and its arrangement in the room, on the efficiency of ventilation is shown.