Performance Evaluation of Four-Sided Square Wind Catchers with Different Geometries by Numerical Method

Abstract

Abstract. The extensive enhance of using air conditioning to cool and ventilate buildings in hot -arid climate regions have turned into an actual crisis since these systems consume high load of electricity. Recently, green ventilation features such as wind catchers have been utilized as a solution in order to improve indoor air quality and decrease energy consumption. The most common ventilation device in hot and hot-humid areas of Iran was wind catcher or "Badgir". This study is an outline of the results of a research on the wind catcher element in the traditional architecture of Iran. An appraisal of the wind towers' individuality with prominence on their morphology is presented and classification of the wind towers based on their physical characteristic and parameters are thus proposed. This paper also presents a limited wind driven simulation results which shows the impact of different square wind catcher's plan geometry on the indoor ventilation rate. The simulations accomplished using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), reveal the effect of four different square wind catchers on the indoor ventilation rate.

Analysis of traditional windcatchers and the effects produced by changing the size, shape, and position of the outlet opening

“…A considerable body of work has been published on the operation and capacity of the different types of windcatchers to increase natural ventilation in buildings. Research that studies the functioning of the traditional windcatchers covers: (a) monitoring in buildings with windcatchers [7][8][9], (b) experiments with scale models in wind tunnels [10][11][12][13][14], supplemented with CFD, and (c) studies with CFD [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] at full size, generally made using commercial codes. The functioning of windcatchers is so convenient that many modern architectural designs seek their utilization.…”

Implementation and Validation of OpenFOAM for Thermal Convection of Airflow

“…Particularly, the CFD of flow simulation inside the ovens preferred to use the model to other turbulence models. Many researchers used commercial CFD software such as ANSYS-Fluent, FloVent, STAR-CD, and COMSOL which had been contained the turbulence model for studying and designing the good distribution of airflow [9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Unfortunately, the simulated works were gathered with an expensive license cost of the commercial CFD software.…”

Comparison of Turbulence Models for Flow Past NACA0015 Airfoil Using OpenFOAM

“…The semi-implicit method for pressure-linked equations (SIMPLE) was an effective algorithm which also was the solution methods for solving pressurevelocity coupling problem under the steady state condition [20]. Many researchers used commercial CFD software such as ANSYS, FLUENT, and STAR-CD which were contained turbulence models and solution methods for the flow past airfoil simulation [21][22][23]. Unfortunately they were limited by an expensive license cost and the CFD code development.…”