A Numerical Study of the Impact of Solar Radiation on the Temperature and Airflow Fields in Hospital Wards

Abstract

Post the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare has become a key public concern, and medical environment quality requirements have grown stricter. New hospital wards often adopt a large window-to-wall ratio for natural lighting, but this may cause uneven temperature and draft discomfort in hot-summer and cold-winter regions’ air-conditioned wards. This study takes a standard double-bed ward as the object, establishing a physical model via GAMBIT and conducting FLUENT simulations with the S2S radiation model and Realizable k-ε model. It analyzes temperature and airflow fields under Summer/Winter Solstice solar radiation and compares them with non-radiation conditions. Results show the human core activity zone (0.7m-1.9m) is weakly affected by solar radiation: summer cooling brings 293.0K-293.8K and 0.04-0.12m/s, winter heating 288.0K-289.0K and 0.02-0.06m/s, all meeting GB/T 50736-2012. However, the upper zone (>2m) suffers significant airflow acceleration and temperature fluctuations due to thermal buoyancy, reducing air conditioning efficiency. This study provides scientific references for ward air conditioning optimization and bed layout.