Potential of Natural Ventilation in a Tropical Climate

Sustainable architecture design for tropical climates requires the use of natural ventilation besideseveral strategies, as appropriated materials, site location, faade orientation, solar shading, etc. Theindoor thermal comfort and thermal performance of the building depends on the bioclimatic zonewhere is located. The new Brazilian Norm ABNT NBR 15220-3 has established bioclimatic zones and guidelines for low-income houses. Due to the lack or scarcity of meteorology wind data, certainregions as Amazon and Northeast coast were inserted in a same zone. This will pose problems toarchitecture design. To overcome this problem this paper proposes an average wind zoning map forall the country, considering two heights from the ground; 1.5 m and 6m. The average wind velocitieswere calculated using a logarithm profile with available average velocities from theoretical-empiricaldata chart ( meteorology data + WasP simulations) at 50m height, used for site analysis of windelectricity generation.