INDOOR AIR ’99, Vol.1, PP.349~354. EFFECT OF PARTITION LOCATION ON THE AIR AND CONTAMINANT MOVEMENT IN A ROOM H Lee and H B Awbi The University of Reading, UK ABSTRACT The ventilation engineer's plan at the design stage could be influenced by many factors. It may also be different from the requirements for the final users of the spaces. In case of open- space design, which is getting popular due to its flexibility, it is more difficult to provide adequate ventilation to control the indoor air quality. Specially, when partitioning of the space is employed. The partition configurations, including the gap height from the floor and the location in the room, and the contaminant source location in the space are the factors concerning this study. Physical model tests were conducted to study the effect of partitioning on the airflow and the contaminant movement in the room. The test conditions were also numerically simulated by using Computerized Fluid Dynamics (CFD). It was found that the partition location and its gap affect the air distribution in the room, in terms of the room mean age of air, although there is no obvious trend. The contaminant source location also affects the ventilation performance, in terms of the ventilation effectiveness. The results imply that there exist optimal configurations, i.e. the partition location, the gap height, and the contaminant source location, for maximum ventilation performance. If these are correctly applied, the air quality in the space could be improved. KEY WORDS CFD; Chamber Study; Mixing Ventilation; Tracer Gas; Ventilation Effectiveness INTRODUCTION Recently, Sandberg and Claesson [1] studied the effect of blockage on the air distribution in a room and showed that the blockages could affect the air distribution in their tests. Nielsen et al. [2] investigated the influence of office furniture on the air movement in a room with mixing ventilation, and found that the furniture affected the air movement in the lower part of room, but not in the upper part. Bauman et al. [3] investigated a wide range of partition configurations and environmental parameters to study the comfort and ventilation conditions in workstations. Their conclusions, based on model tests using conventional ceiling supply and return ventilation system, were that the effect of office partitions on the air circulation or ventilation efficiency was insignificant. Halliwell et al. [4] studied the effect of partition numerically using CFD and concluded that introducing a partition into a room created a highly polluted zone. Lee and Awbi [5] have studied the effect of interior partitions on the air movement in a room with mixing ventilation. The height of partition and the gap between the partition and the floor were tested experimentally and numerically using CFD. They found that the interior