Retrofitting the design of a ductwork system is often a critical aspect when renovating a centralized air distribution system. However, the existing approaches rely on the rules of thumb due to the absence of a standardized guideline for the design retrofitting process. Consequently, design engineers face costly and time-consuming challenges in generating retrofitted designs, particularly when dealing with the complexities of reusing the existing ductwork system. Although their design output may achieve functionality, it is not necessarily optimal in terms of cost and performance. To overcome these challenges, this paper proposes a simulation-based ductwork design strategy that utilizes metaheuristic optimization techniques to generate optimized ductwork designs for retrofits. The proposed method offers an automated solution for generating optimized ductwork configurations (i.e., layout and sizes). It strategically maximizes the reuse of existing ductwork components while simultaneously fulfilling the design performance criteria desired by the system and minimizing its life cycle cost. A case study was conducted to present the effectiveness of the developed method in retrofitting the ductwork design for a multi-storey school building. This study involved a comparison between the design solution generated by the proposed method and the design solution generated through a conventional retrofitting design approach. The results from the proposed design retrofitting method showed a 17 % lower LCC and an approximately equally well-balanced design. These findings indicate the method’s promising potential to contribute to the HVAC industry by providing an effective simulation-based method for automatically optimizing ductwork designs for retrofits.

中文翻译：

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基于仿真的暖通空调管道系统改造优化方法

改造集中式空气分配系统时，改造管道系统的设计通常是一个关键方面。然而，由于缺乏设计改造过程的标准化指南，现有方法依赖于经验法则。因此，设计工程师在生成改造设计时面临着成本高昂且耗时的挑战，特别是在处理重复使用现有管道系统的复杂性时。尽管他们的设计输出可以实现功能，但在成本和性能方面不一定是最佳的。为了克服这些挑战，本文提出了一种基于模拟的管道系统设计策略，该策略利用元启发式优化技术来生成用于改造的优化管道系统设计。所提出的方法提供了用于生成优化管道系统配置（即布局和尺寸）的自动化解决方案。它战略性地最大限度地重复利用现有管道系统组件，同时满足系统所需的设计性能标准并最大限度地降低其生命周期成本。通过案例研究来展示所开发方法在多层校舍管道系统设计改造中的有效性。本研究涉及所提出的方法生成的设计解决方案与通过传统改造设计方法生成的设计解决方案之间的比较。所提出的设计改造方法的结果显示，LCC 降低了 17%，并且设计大致同样平衡。这些发现表明，该方法通过提供一种有效的基于模拟的方法来自动优化改造管道系统设计，从而为 HVAC 行业做出贡献。