Louver and window position effect on cross-ventilation in a generic isolated building: A CFD approach

Abstract

Natural ventilation has been used to increase indoor air quality, remove pollutants, and remove heat absorbed in the building structure. Some architectural features such as wind-catcher systems are used to induce airflow into buildings, and openings equipped with louvers are employed to reduce solar daylight while allowing natural ventilation. Earlier studies on ventilated louvers and wind-catchers have shown the impact of the louvers’ opening positions and slat angles. However, their combination with each other has been less studied. This paper presents CFD simulations of cross-ventilation in a generic isolated building integrated with a one-sided roof-top wind-catcher and the outlet opening, both equipped with louvers for three different window opening positions. The isothermal 3D steady RANS equations were solved with the Standard k- ε method. The CFD simulations with CFX software were validated with the wind-tunnel experiments. The results show that the lowest dimensionless wind velocities inside the building were observed for the arrangement “Down” for both cases with and without louvers. In contrast, the highest air exchange efficiency and dimensionless wind velocities inside the building were measured for the arrangement “Up” for the case with louvers. This research can be considered as an architectural strategy to improve indoor natural cross-ventilation.

Data-driven prediction of indoor airflow distribution in naturally ventilated residential buildings using combined CFD simulation and machine learning (ML) approach

“…The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique has recently become more familiar in forecasting natural ventilation performance as computing capability has advanced (Cook et al, 2003;Cook & Lomas, 1998;Liu et al, 2009Liu et al, , 2015Liu et al, , 2018Nielsen, 2015;Qi & Wei, 2020;Yazarlou & Barzkar, 2022;Zhai, 2006;Zhang et al, 2022). Wind-driven CFD tests have demonstrated that the passive technique can meet thermal comfort while enhancing air velocity by reducing indoor temperatures and energy consumption (Elshafei et al, 2017;Hong et al, 2017;Raji et al, 2020).…”

Measurement and large-eddy simulation of single-sided natural ventilation in urban building groups

“…1 Natural ventilation is of great significance in preventing the spread of aerosol-transmitted diseases indoors. [2][3][4][5] A survey of window-opening habits of Chinese residents revealed that 86.8% of the residents chose single-sided ventilation in northern China. 6 Therefore, single-sided natural ventilation is an important ventilation mode for residential buildings, 7,8 and it can create a healthy and comfortable indoor environment.…”