natural ventilation

Buildings account for a substantial portion of global energy consumption, and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems are responsible for approximately 40% of the buildings’ energy consumption. A building façade, with HVAC, has a great influence on the internal environment. An optimization of the façade design and operation can help improve building energy efficiency.

Noticeably higher concentrations of gaseous pollutants were measured in bedrooms than living rooms, and in winter than summer, where p-values were found to be of a stringent significance (average p = 0.008). PM2.5 concentrations were found to be exceeding the WHO 24-h average threshold of 15 µg/m3 in kitchens for the week-long monitoring time (92% in winter, 51% in summer).

We proposed a new design of an affordable apartment with a closed-vertical void to improve the indoor natural ventilation especially for the leeward side of the building and constructed a full-scale experimental house in Indonesia in 2020. This paper analyses the effects of the proposed ventilation system through field measurements in the experimental house. In the experimental house, the vertical-closed void with a width of 2.85 m was designed between the two rows of units.

The BENEFIT project evaluates the indoor environmental quality in non-domestic buildings where energy efficiency upgrades will be implemented; a baseline for indoor air quality hass been established across 50+ environments prior to the commencement of retrofit activities. Initial findings in pre-retrofit environments reveal widespread underventilation and the significant influence of outdoor PM2.5 levels indoors in existing classroom and office environments. Detailed pre-retrofit results will be presented at an upcoming conference. 

The global demand to improve the energy performance of buildings has led to greater air tightness and uncertainty in the ability of natural ventilation to maintain adequate indoor environmental quality. A monitoring campaign was carried out to evaluate the long-term indoor environmental quality across a year-long period in energy-efficient Irish dwellings.

The research exposes a critical feedback loop: the building sector's high energy consumption and emissions contribute significantly to climate change.  Warming temperatures, in turn, lead to increased reliance on energy-intensive HVAC systems, further exacerbating the problem. 

In many countries, the traditional method of ventilating dwellings involved natural ventilation, based on the operation of windows and high levels of infiltration through the building envelope, particularly through windows and window-wall joints. In Spain, in the middle of the last century, the use of vertical ventilation shafts in the wet rooms of dwellings became widespread, and it is currently the most common ventilation system in existing dwellings.

The challenges posed by climate change and related thermal discomfort in school classrooms are a worldwide challenge. Recent research indicates that numerous low energy school buildings do not comply with comfort criteria and suffer from overheating. This study aimed to determine when indoor air temperature conditions in classrooms were vulnerable to overheating risk. Secondly, quantify the contribution and correlation of outdoor air temperature and individual building features on the indoor air temperature in Irish low energy naturally ventilated schools.  

Occupants in natural ventilated buildings usually control ventilation through window opening. As part of the PRELUDE H2020 project a framework of how to predict an indoor environment by correlating internal environmental variables and external climatic variables was developed; this was presented at the AIVC conference in 2022. The climate correlation model consists of equations correlating external and internal parameters, derived from predictions of a thermal model (EnergyPlus) of the target building.

Sufficient ventilation in clinics is critical for diluting virus concentrations and lowering subsequent doses inhaled by the occupants. Several advanced simulation methods and tools for building physics and indoor air fluid dynamics are currently available in research and industry. However, in naturally ventilated buildings, indoor air distribution depends strongly on local and dynamically changing conditions, e.g., opening sizes and time, exhaust shaft location, and climatic and weather conditions.