natural ventilation

This paper presents a thermal simulation validation study of the typical precision that a trained thermal simulation engineer can expect to obtain for the simulation of a room connected to a naturally ventilated double skin facade. The open source building thermal simulation tool EnergyPlus is used to predict air and surface temperatures in a free running weather exposed test cell.

Children spend the majority of their weekdays in classrooms that often have low indoor air quality and limited financial resources for the initial and running costs of mechanical ventilation systems. Designing effective natural ventilation (NV) systems in schools is difficult due to the intense use of the classroom spaces and the dependence of NV on building geometry and outdoor conditions. Building thermal and airflow simulation tools are fundamental to predict NV system performance in the design phase.

This paper presents a validation of airflow network (AFN) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations for a naturally ventilated office building using wind tunnel measurements as the reference for external pressure coefficients and effective airflow rate prediction. The CFD simulation model is also used to study the effect of partially open windows on the effective flow rate. This study also includes a design exercise for a naturally ventilated office building that analyses the differences in predicted average window open area for a typical weather year.

This paper presents a study of the impact of horizontal aperture separation in single-sided ventilation flows with two apertures (SS2). The study is based on wind tunnel measurements and dimensional analysis. The results show that the SS2 ventilation flow rate, scaled with incoming wind velocity and aperture area, depends on the incoming wind angle relative to the aperture façade, θ, and on the aperture separation scaled by building width, s′. For most wind angles, the ventilation flow increases as the square-root of s′.

Throughout history, natural ventilation has remained the preferred choice for the majority of residential buildings, while, in commercial buildings, natural ventilation went from being the single option to somewhat of a lost art as mechanical ventilation systems and air conditioning became the standard during the second half of the twentieth century. Recently, as a result of environmental concerns, in particular the greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, interest in natural ventilation in commercial buildings has seen a resurgence.

Reducing primary energy consumption is an essential issue for the sector of building construction. This paper refers to building ventilation systems and focuses on low pressure flat plate heat exchangers, designed for low pressure drops and low air velocity, minimizing the electrical consumption of fans. The device is conceived for working within passive ventilation systems, as a ventilation heat recovery stage during winter and sensible heat dissipation during summer.

This paper presents the general concept of the NAC (Natural Air Conditioning)-wall system and some experimental results on a first prototype. The originality of the system is to perform a solar DEC (Desiccant, Evaporative Cooling) open cycle by exploiting natural buoyancy driven ventilation, thus avoiding the use of fans.

The supply air is dehumidified by a zeolite based adsorption bed and is cooled indirectly by an evaporative cooler, through a low pressure heat exchanger.

This special issue on Breakthrough of natural and hybrid ventilative cooling technologies: models and simulations, together with the connected issue Breakthrough of natural and hybrid ventilative cooling technologies: strategies, applications and case studies (vol. 16, issue 1), focuses on methods, tools and technologies for reaching the above-mentioned goal through the use of ventilative cooling, i.e. cooling by controlled natural ventilation (CNV). This strategy is one of the most cost-effective alternatives to air-conditioning systems.

This study analyses the climate-dependent passive ventilative cooling (PVC) potential in central and southern Europe. This analysis was carried out in two phases: (1) evaluation of PVC potential as a climate-dependent variable, in different locations representative of European climate zones for both wind-drive airflow (comfort ventilation) and temperature gradient (environmental and structural cooling); (2) verification of the above PVC potential through dynamic energy simulations on a reference-building model located in selected cities.