wind catcher

Wind catchers are natural ventilation systems attached to buildings in order to ventilate the indoor air. In order to design and evaluate the performance of wind catchers, as a natural ventilation system, an accurate CFD simulation of indoor airflow and outdoor wind flow is fundamental. It is widely known that there are a large number of computational parameters influencing CFD simulations. Consequently, comprehensive sensitivity analyses of the effect of these parameters on the simulation results are essential to provide guidance for the evaluation of a CFD study.

Wind catcher systems have been employed in buildings in the Middle East for many centuries and they are known by different names in different parts of the region. Recently there has been an increase in the application of this approach for natural ventilation and passive cooling in the UK and other countries.