ASHRAE Journal - October 2010 - 59

in load-control programs but customers do not know what to do and may lack the necessary HVAC equipment and controls. Controls and equipment manufacturers will benefit from pre-competitive knowledge about what strategies work for given equipment, controls, building thermal response and loads, and from an assessment of what changes are required in equipment and controls. ASHRAE can usefully provide this knowledge.

pressors and systems to operate with CO2 refrigerant. This will help ensure optimized long term chemical stability and hence reliability of these systems. This research will require the utilization of a high pressure vessel and associated techniques. Method development is outside the scope of this project, however this work will provide a basic experimental outline for this type of work. This experimental basis could provide a solid basis for ASHRAE SPC 175.

1395-RP	 Heat Gains from Electrical and Control Equipment in Industrial Plants, Part 2
April	2006	–	September	2010; Kansas State University; Principal	Investigator, Warren White; TC	9.2, Industrial Air Conditioning

1415-RP	 Thermal and Lighting Performance Metrics of Tubular Daylighting Devices
May,	2010	–	October	2011; National Research Council Canada; Principal	Investigator, Aziz Laouadi; TC	4.5, Fenestration

This proposed research is a follow-up to the recently and successfully completed 1104-RP, Heat Gain from Electrical and Control Equipment in Industrial Plants. This work would extend the results of 1104-RP by completing the recommended testing of equipment identified in the initial work The design of the air conditioning systems for an industrial facility including the electrical equipment room is normally performed in parallel with the facility electrical system design. This means that the cooling equipment is sized based on any available estimated heat rejection values or on rules of thumb, guesses and assumptions. Because the heat from the electrical equipment is often a significant percentage of the total cooling load, accuracy is important to a successful air conditioning system design. This is particularly true in mission critical facilities and electronic equipment areas. Appropriately sized systems are also important for energy conservation and moisture control.

This research is intended to provide computational algorithms to support the development of fenestration rating standards, the ASHRAE load toolkit, and building-energy and lighting simulation software. Building designers (lighting designers, architects and engineers) will be better able to specify energy-efficient tubular daylighting devices (TDD) in commercial and residential buildings with more confidence, and to show compliance with existing building energy codes and energy efficiency standards. To speed up technology transfer to the building/fenestration design community, this research will develop a simple design guide for generic types of TDD’s, which will be included in the Fenestration Chapter of a future edition of the ASHRAE Handbook of Fundamentals. The guide will also provide useful information to include in the Daylighting Chapter of a future edition of the IESNA handbook. The validated algorithms will be more likely to be adopted in fenestration rating standards since the latter do not currently provide any simulation procedure to rate TDD’s. Manufacturers of TDD’s will then benefit from a significant cost reduction to rate their products.

1397-RP	 Experimental Investigation of Hospital Operating Room (OR) Air Distribution
September	2008	–	August	2010; University of Colorado; Principal	Investigator, John Zhai; TC	9.6, Healthcare Facilities

1416-RP	 Development of Internal Surface Convection Correlations for Energy and Load Calculation Methods
April	2008	–	March	2011; University of Texas-Austin; Principal	Investigator, Atila Novoselac; TC	4.7, Energy Calculations

The proposed research will advance the state of the art in design of operating room (OR) spaces; it may also promote advances in related fluid mechanics research areas. If a protective thermal plume is maintained above the surgical site, the deposition of infectious particles should be reduced. The conditions that sustain the thermal plume have been predicted by earlier CFD simulations. (ASHRAE, Memarzadeh and Manning, 2003). The pertinent results will verify these predictions. Otherwise, the results will define a somewhat different but experimentally verified range of conditions. These results will have significant impact on practical OR design guidelines, but the impact will not be limited to this one, albeit important, direct application. Other indirect advances will accrue from the proposed research. The detailed experimental results will be used to refine and improve the CFD modeling of OR air distribution, and the improved modeling techniques can be applied to air distribution engineering elsewhere in health care, such as patient protection rooms and infection isolation rooms, where similar unidirectional laminar flows are advisable. The improved engineering tools should be broadly useful in health care and in similar application such as industrial clean rooms.

Currently there are no correlations developed for the environments with the vertical diffuser jets such as: 1) rooms with ceiling slot diffusers on external walls and 2) rooms with floor supply registers. This type of environment is common for rooms in the perimeter zone of a building, and previously developed convection correlations are not applicable because of considerably different airflow. The proposed research will significantly improve the accuracy of load and energy calculations by developing convection correlations for these two common room air flow configurations. the Trade Off Between Grid 1418-RP	 OptimizingCoarse Grid CFD Modeling Resolution and Simulation Accuracy:
September	2008	–	August	2010; University of Colorado; Principal	Investigator, John Zhai; TC	4.10, Indoor Environment Modeling

1404-RP	 Measurement, Modeling, Analysis and Reporting Protocols for Short-Term M&V of Whole Building Energy Performance
September	2009	–	August	2011; Milwaukee School of Engineering; Principal	Investigator, Bass Abushakra; TC	4.7, Energy Calculations

The objective of this research is to develop a new method to determine the shortest time period for energy use monitoring involving hourly (or sub-hourly) data that will yield reliable and accurate long term energy use estimates within acceptable uncertainty limits. By evaluating the uncertainty in the measured data as the monitoring period progresses, the new method will allow users to evaluate the energy performance and calculate energy savings in commercial and institutional buildings, in a cost-effective short-term monitoring period instead of the current year-long monitoring stipulated in most M&V protocols. The new approach would resolve the problem of needing long-term monitored data, which is often very costly to obtain and/or historically unavailable. In addition, this measurement/extrapolation approach should be designed as simply as possible to meet the uncertainty targets in energy savings stipulated in M&V protocols such as ASHRAE Guideline 14. Lining Length on the 1408-RP	 The Effect of Sheet Metal Ductwork Insertion Loss of Acoustical Duct Liner in
September	2008	–	August	2011; University of Nevada-Las Vegas; Principal	Investigator, Doug Reynolds; TC	2.6, Sound and Vibration Control

The overall objective of this project is to explore, through both theoretical analysis and numerical experiment, the trade-off between CFD grid resolution and simulation accuracy and to provide guidelines for proper selection of CFD grids for simulating typical indoor airflow conditions. More specific goals of the project include: (1) Investigate systematically the inherent relationships between CFD grid resolution and simulation accuracy for typical flow types encountered in various indoor environments and understand the influence of numerical viscosity on simulation results; (2) Develop decision matrices that can provide quantitative and practical guidelines on selecting appropriate grid resolutions for typical flows in divers indoor environments based on the requirements of computing time and simulation accuracy; (3) Demonstrate and validate the application of the developed matrices for a few representative indoor flow scenarios that have been well studied in previous physical experiments. Discharge Installation Effects on Airfoil (AF) 1420-RP	 Inlet andPlug Fans for Air and Sound Performance Centrifugal Plenum
April	2010	–	March	2011; AMCA International, Inc.; Principal	Investigator, Mark Stevens; TC	5.1, Fans

The incremental sound attenuation values (expressed in dB/ft and dB/m) for acoustically lined ductwork that are in the ASHRAE Applications Handbook are based on tests conducted on a very small sample of duct sizes, and are misleading in that they permit the assumption that the liner attenuation is linearly proportional to duct length. The proposed research will help TC 2.6 modify the incremental attenuation values to show how they depend on duct length so that air distribution system designers can minimize the use of acoustical duct liner while achieving the necessary noise reduction that it provides.

Very little information exists for accurately predicting the aerodynamic and acoustical response of centrifugal plenum fans to common appurtenances at the fan inlet and discharge. The existing information for these system effects on air performance is limited to housed centrifugal fans. No experimental data exists for system effects on sound. The significance of system effects on plenum fans due to inlet and discharge appurtenances is widely accepted. Reports of installed performance indicate reductions in total efficiency of over 25% and sound power (Lw) increases of over 10 dB when compared to catalog ratings. The wasted energy was estimated in millions of megawatts per year. The estimated capital expenditures necessary to resolve the comfort and noise problems are over several million dollars. Improved knowledge of the precise values for these system effects could greatly reduce both the amount of wasted energy and unanticipated capital expenditures. The objective of this project is to obtain a body of measured inlet and discharge system effects for both air and sound for two typical sizes (12”, 27” ) AF.

1431-RP	 Analysis of Transient Characteristics, Effectiveness, and Optimization of Cleanroom Airlocks
December	2007	–	November	2010; ENGSYSCO, Inc.; Principal	Investigator, Wei Sun; TC	9.11, Clean Spaces

1409-RP	 Stability of Candidate Lubricants for CO

September	2009	–	August	2010; Spauschus Associates; Principal	Investigator, Ngoc Dung Rohatgi; TC	3.2, Refrigerant System Chemistry

2

Refrigeration

The data generated in this work will enable compressor designers and manufacturers to use sound, experimental evidence to make lubricant decisions while developing com-

Though widely utilized as a de-contamination barrier, the performance and effectiveness of airlocks have not been thoroughly studied and proper design guidelines are not yet available in the industry. Airlocks are either designed by cleanroom architects and engineers or manufactured as pre-engineered equipment by factories based on

October 2010

ASHRAE Journal

59
ASHRAE Journal - October 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ASHRAE Journal - October 2010
