A review of advanced air distribution methods - theory, practice, limitations and solutions

Ventilation and air distribution methods are important for indoor thermal environments and air quality. Effective distribution of airflow for indoor built environments with the aim of simultaneously offsetting thermal and ventilation loads in an energy efficient manner has been the research focus in the past several decades. Based on airflow characteristics, ventilation methods can be categorized as fully mixed or non-uniform. Non-uniform methods can be further divided into piston, stratified and task zone ventilation. In this paper, the theory, performance, practical applications, limitations and solutions pertaining to ventilation and air distribution methods are critically reviewed. Since many ventilation methods are buoyancy driving that confines their use for heating mode, some methods suitable for heating are discussed. Furthermore, measuring and evaluating methods for ventilation and air distribution are also discussed to give a comprehensive framework of the review

Direct measurements of the drag force over aligned arrays of cubes exposed to boundary-layer flows

Wind tunnel measurements of the total drag force for aligned arrays of cubes exposed to two different boundary-layer flows at three flow velocities are discussed. The drag force for eight different building packing densities λp (from 0.028 to 1) is measured with a standard load cell generating a novel dataset. Different λp are reproduced by increasing the number of buildings on the same lot area; this represents a real situation that an urban planner is faced with when a lot area of a given (fixed) size is allocated to the development of new built areas. It is assumed that the surrounding terrain is uniform and there is a transition from a given roughness (smooth) to a new roughness (rough). The approaching flow will adjust itself over the new surface within a distance that in general may be larger than the horizontal length covered by the array. We investigate the region where the flow adjustment occurs. The wide range of packing densities allowed us to analyse in detail the evolution of the drag force. The drag force increases with increasing packing densities until it reaches a maximum at an intermediate packing density (λp = 0.25 in our case) followed by a slight decrease at larger packing densities. The value of the drag force depends on the flow adjustment along the array which is evaluated by introducing the parameter “drag area” to retrieve information about the drag distribution at different λp. Results clearly suggest a change of the distribution of the drag force, which is found to be relatively uniform at low packing densities, while most of the force acts on first rows of the arrays at large packing densities. The drag area constitutes the basis for the formulation of a new adjustment length scale defined as the ratio between the volume of the air within the array and the drag area. The proposed adjustment length scale automatically takes into account the change in drag distribution along the array for a better parameterization of urban effects in dispersion models

Flow and pollutant dispersion within the canal grande channel in venice (Italy) via CFD techniques

The present paper is aimed at the analysis of flow and pollutant dispersion in a portion of the Canal Grande (Grand Canal) in Venice (Italy) by means of both Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) FLUENT simulations and wind tunnel experiments performed at the University of Gävle (Sweden). For this application, Canal Grande can be viewed as a sort of street canyon where the bottom surface is water and bus boat emissions are the major source of pollution. Numerical investigations were made to assess the effect of the water surface on air flow and pollutant concentrations in the atmosphere. One of the challenges has been to deal with the interface between two immiscible fluids which requires ad-hoc treatment of the wall in terms of the numerical scheme adopted and the grid definition which needs to be much finer than in typical numerical airflow simulations in urban street canyons. Preliminary results have shown that the presence of water at the bottom of the street canyon modifies airflow and turbulence structure with direct consequences on concentration distribution within the domain