Improving HVAC ductwork designs while considering fittings at an early stage

Heuristic Optimization for Designing Centralized Air Distribution Systems in Non-Residential Buildings

“…Additionally, as output designs tend to be not very accurate, it is possible to run into unforeseen issues when installing the actual system that was intended (for instance, over-pressurization [13]). Furthermore, they are conservative and inefficient as they do not consider the local economic conditions [6], [14], [15].…”

“…Recently, Kabbara et al [15] highlighted another significant limitation of designing ductwork systems for both conventional and optimization methods. To specify, the authors noted that the existing design methods typically fail to sufficiently consider sizing the fittings at an early design stage (detailed explanation in section 2.3.3).…”

“…We established the mean balancing percentage for non-critical paths in every design to assess the balancing criteria. The mean balancing percentage [15] is estimated using the following equations:…”