Simulation of indoor environment in the concert hall housed in a former church

A previously developed approach to simplify the numerical modelling of heat sources based on the replacement of a heat source by a simple boundary condition (see VVI 5/2012) is applied in the real scenario of a recently refurbished former church built in the 14th century. The building is now used as a concert and conference hall with up to 350 visitors staying for different time periods during each day. The investor of the restoration was concerned about temperature fluctuations caused by the variable occupancy and the possible negative impact on the historical stucco decorations and on the original wooden trusses of the former church. Moreover, only natural ventilation through window openings on the street level and the windows in the roof is possible in order to preserve the original look of the building. The study elaborated upon in the paper is based on the results of the CFD simulations with simplified models of visitors acting as heat sources under two different occupancy scenarios.