Measurement set-up for the verification of CFD modeling used in a design study for a local bench heating system for churches

Within a European research project on the heating of churches a local heating system, mounted into the pews, is being developed. The goal of the project is to design a heating system that provides a comfortable climate for people and that is compatible with the preservation of historical churches and their interior. The evaluation of different variants of the pew heating system by using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) plays an important role in the design study. These CFD calculations should be verified with measurements in order to obtain reliable results. First a simplified environment with known boundary conditions was used to determine the characteristics of the heating systems, both in CFD modeling and measurements. In this paper the measurement set-up and methods as well as the qualitative and quantitative outcomes are presented. The measurements of air temperatures, surface temperatures, air velocities and the visualization of the airflows in the set-up are used for verification. The first simulation results show good correspondence with the measurements. In this way it is possible to determine in a simplified environment how the heating systems should be modeled. Afterwards these models can be implemented in a more complex geometry with real boundary conditions.