Cross Ventilation in High-Rise Apartment Building: Effect of Ventilation Shaft Aperture Configuration on Air Velocity and Air Flow Distribution

Abstract

Ventilation shaft can be used in apartment units to provide cross ventilation by creating a pressure difference between the room's windward opening and outlet at the roof. The previous research about ventilation shaft has shown its potential in providing good natural ventilation in high-rise apartment building. This paper examines the influence of ventilation shaft aperture configuration on its ability to generate air movement and uniform flow distribution. The experiment is carried out using computational fluid dynamics with RNG k-e calculation method. Ventilation shaft system with a uniform aperture can produce very high air velocity only at the top floor while ventilation shaft system with internal aperture size increased from the upper floor to the lower floor can produce better air flow distribution.

Applicability of Direct Evaporative Cooling for Low-Rise Residential Building in Surabaya

“…A more advanced strategy is utilizing a ventilation shaft at the back of the housing unit. However, this strategy can only increase air velocity up to 0.5 m/s (Fahmi et al, 2018). These efforts show that the passively proposed strategies can still not achieve the required air velocity.…”

The impacts of introducing voids combinations on indoor ventilation performance in high-rise residential buildings

“…Another study by Zhou et al (2014) on indoor air quality in naturally ventilated high-rise residential buildings in Chongqing, China, revealed that the age of air was reduced by 90% higher than the minimum building guideline requirements compared to the non-optimised building design. Fahmi et al (2018) revealed that passive design strategy like ventilation shafts could achieve adequate indoor air quality in residential buildings in tropical climates. The same passive design feature was investigated by Prajongsan and Sharples (2012) in high-rise residential building in Bangkok, Thailand, showed that thermal comfort could be increased to 56% and reduce a 2,700 kWh of cooling energy.…”