CFD study on the behaviour and turbulence of the airflow induced by the moving elevator car in elevator shaft using K-epsilon model

Abstract

Land scarcity in relation to the swift urbanisation causes vertical development of buildings and infrastructures. The increasing importance of the main vertical transport - elevator, urges the elevator aerodynamics study to evaluate its acoustic, ride comfort, aerodynamics performance, and airflow effect. They were carried out experimentally or(and) via modeling and simulation. However, among the very limited published CFD studies on the elevator aerodynamics, there is insufficient detailed method and data been presented. Consequently, there is a very limited open-source established method and preliminary data necessary for the elevator aerodynamic study, restricting the potential improvement in this topic. Therefore, this paper studies the behaviour and turbulence of the airflow induced by the elevator car movement in the elevator shaft using the PIMPLE algorithm and the k-epsilon model. Details on the theories and methods were explained and discussed, which include the computational domain settings, governing principles and equations, numerical methods and mechanisms, and boundary conditions. An unsteady, turbulent, incompressible, and Newtonian airflow was assumed in the OpenFOAM simulation. The airflow was affected mainly by the blockage effect and the Bernoulli’s effect. The simulation result obeys the theories of fluid mechanics and physics, indicating its reliability to be the preliminary data for further study.