Effect of Roof Design Configurations On Natural Ventilation with an Obstacle Inside the Building Model

Roof shape, roof angle, and internal obstacle are some of the factors that have a substantial impact on building's ventilation performance. However, previous roof ventilation studies have not considered the influence of internal obstacle which can affect the overall building’s ventilation performance. For this study, CFD was used to study the effect of roof design configurations on natural ventilation with an obstacle inside the building model. The numerical simulation was carried out by using steady RANS equation specifically the Standard k-ε with enhanced wall treatment. A total of 40 simulation cases were carried out. The study considered two roof shapes mainly the sawtooth roof and the saltbox roof with varying roof angle which were 10º, 20º, 30º, and 40º. Internal obstacles with various height were further added into the simulation cases. Next, grid sensitivity analysis was carried out using Grid Convergence Index (GCI) and Factor of two of observations (FAC2) analysis was carried out as model verification method to ensure a reliable simulation result. Based on the results, it is found that airflow characteristics such as wind speed, distribution of pressure coefficient, and flowrate of an isolated building are strongly dependent on the roof shape and roof angle. Next, the dimensionless flowrate (DFR) is measured to be highest with largest roof angle while lowest with smaller roof angle. Furthermore, the DFR of a building with internal obstacle is lower than that without an internal obstacle due to blockage of incoming air. Moreover, the results show that the sawtooth roof outperforms the saltbox roof in terms of measured parameter. Finally, the study concluded that an isolated building with higher roof angle and without an internal obstacle leads to the best dimensionless flowrate throughout the building.Roof shape, roof angle, and internal obstacle are some of the factors that have a substantial impact on building's ventilation performance. However, previous roof ventilation studies have not considered the influence of internal obstacle which can affect the overall building’s ventilation performance. For this study, CFD was used to study the effect of roof design configurations on natural ventilation with an obstacle inside the building model. The numerical simulation was carried out by using steady RANS equation specifically the Standard k-ε with enhanced wall treatment. A total of 40 simulation cases were carried out. The study considered two roof shapes mainly the sawtooth roof and the saltbox roof with varying roof angle which were 10º, 20º, 30º, and 40º. Internal obstacles with various height were further added into the simulation cases. Next, grid sensitivity analysis was carried out using Grid Convergence Index (GCI) and Factor of two of observations (FAC2) analysis was carried out as model verification method to ensure a reliable simulation result. Based on the results, it is found that airflow characteristics such as wind speed, distribution of pressure coefficient, and flowrate of an isolated building are strongly dependent on the roof shape and roof angle. Next, the dimensionless flowrate (DFR) is measured to be highest with largest roof angle while lowest with smaller roof angle. Furthermore, the DFR of a building with internal obstacle is lower than that without an internal obstacle due to blockage of incoming air. Moreover, the results show that the sawtooth roof outperforms the saltbox roof in terms of measured parameter. Finally, the study concluded that an isolated building with higher roof angle and without an internal obstacle leads to the best dimensionless flowrate throughout the building

Effect of Roof Design Configurations On Natural Ventilation with an Obstacle Inside the Building Model

Roof shape, roof angle, and internal obstacle are some of the factors that have a substantial impact on building's ventilation performance. However, previous roof ventilation studies have not considered the influence of internal obstacle which can affect the overall building’s ventilation performance. For this study, CFD was used to study the effect of roof design configurations on natural ventilation with an obstacle inside the building model. The numerical simulation was carried out by using steady RANS equation specifically the Standard k-ε with enhanced wall treatment. A total of 40 simulation cases were carried out. The study considered two roof shapes mainly the sawtooth roof and the saltbox roof with varying roof angle which were 10º, 20º, 30º, and 40º. Internal obstacles with various height were further added into the simulation cases. Next, grid sensitivity analysis was carried out using Grid Convergence Index (GCI) and Factor of two of observations (FAC2) analysis was carried out as model verification method to ensure a reliable simulation result. Based on the results, it is found that airflow characteristics such as wind speed, distribution of pressure coefficient, and flowrate of an isolated building are strongly dependent on the roof shape and roof angle. Next, the dimensionless flowrate (DFR) is measured to be highest with largest roof angle while lowest with smaller roof angle. Furthermore, the DFR of a building with internal obstacle is lower than that without an internal obstacle due to blockage of incoming air. Moreover, the results show that the sawtooth roof outperforms the saltbox roof in terms of measured parameter. Finally, the study concluded that an isolated building with higher roof angle and without an internal obstacle leads to the best dimensionless flowrate throughout the building.Roof shape, roof angle, and internal obstacle are some of the factors that have a substantial impact on building's ventilation performance. However, previous roof ventilation studies have not considered the influence of internal obstacle which can affect the overall building’s ventilation performance. For this study, CFD was used to study the effect of roof design configurations on natural ventilation with an obstacle inside the building model. The numerical simulation was carried out by using steady RANS equation specifically the Standard k-ε with enhanced wall treatment. A total of 40 simulation cases were carried out. The study considered two roof shapes mainly the sawtooth roof and the saltbox roof with varying roof angle which were 10º, 20º, 30º, and 40º. Internal obstacles with various height were further added into the simulation cases. Next, grid sensitivity analysis was carried out using Grid Convergence Index (GCI) and Factor of two of observations (FAC2) analysis was carried out as model verification method to ensure a reliable simulation result. Based on the results, it is found that airflow characteristics such as wind speed, distribution of pressure coefficient, and flowrate of an isolated building are strongly dependent on the roof shape and roof angle. Next, the dimensionless flowrate (DFR) is measured to be highest with largest roof angle while lowest with smaller roof angle. Furthermore, the DFR of a building with internal obstacle is lower than that without an internal obstacle due to blockage of incoming air. Moreover, the results show that the sawtooth roof outperforms the saltbox roof in terms of measured parameter. Finally, the study concluded that an isolated building with higher roof angle and without an internal obstacle leads to the best dimensionless flowrate throughout the building

Effect of Opening Size on Wind-Driven Cross Ventilation

The opening size on indoor airflow is important to the ventilation of building because various size openings change the ventilation performance for building. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate the effect of opening size on indoor airflow characteristics of naturally ventilated building model. The numerical simulation with steady RANS equations was used. A total of six different opening ratios, namely 4:1, 2:1, 1:1, 1:2, 4:9 and 1:4 were considered in this study. The results of mesh independence study and model validation were also in good agreement with previous study. The simulation results show that velocity and pressure of the indoor air, ventilation rate, and pressure coefficient are highly dependent on the opening ratio. The velocity and pressure contour indicate that the lower the opening ratio, the higher the velocity and subsequently lower pressure inside the building. In addition, the pressure coefficient and ventilation rate are also increased as the opening ratio decreases. Besides, the results indicate that percentage increase in ventilation rate of opening ratio 4:1 and 2:1, 2:1 and 1:1, and 1:1 and 1:2 is higher than those of opening ratio for 1:2 and 4:9, 4:9 and 1:4. The study concluded that pairing a large outlet and small inlet leads to increase in better ventilation rate for building

Impact of eave and roof pitch on cross ventilation for an isolated building with sawtooth roof

An eave refers to an extension attached to the building roof to protect the interior space from direct solar radiation and improve the performance on cross ventilation. In this study, the impact of eave inclination angle and roof pitch of an isolated sawtooth roof building on cross ventilation were investigated. The eave configurations at either windward or leeward openings were included. 3D steady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equation in combination with the Shear-Stress Transport model (SST k-ω model) was used for the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. Grid sensitivity study was carried out and the performance of cross ventilation was evaluated based on the non-dimensional velocity magnitude, spatial distribution of pressure coefficient as well as the ventilation rate of the building. For the simulation model with 55° roof pitch, it is observed that a region with high velocity magnitude formed on top of the leeward eave due to the higher roof pitch and presence of the leeward eave. Results also indicated that the building model with 90° leeward eave and 55° roof pitch has the highest increment in ventilation rate which is 7.16%. On the other hand, the building model with 90° windward eave has the highest pressure coefficient because more blockage of airflow is caused by a steeper roof as the roof pitch of the building increases. Furthermore, the building model with 90° leeward eave shows a larger region with negative pressure at the leeward façade indicating higher airflow leaving the leeward opening. Therefore, the airflow behavior and characteristic are both dependent on the roof pitch and eave inclination angle for a naturally ventilated building

Effects of roof configuration on natural ventilation for an isolated building

Numerical analyses based on CFD steady RANS were conducted to investigate the effects of roof configuration on wind-induced natural ventilation for an isolated roofed building. Gable roof and saltbox roof building models were tested with 15˚, 25˚, 35˚ and 45˚ roof pitch in present study. The flow field information and flow characteristics were obtained from the contours and plots generated by CFD. In accordance to the increment of roof pitch, the turbulence kinetic energy and mean velocity ratio show vigorous response. The flow separated at the windward corner do not reattach onto the roof, thus induced higher velocity gradient and form a large vortex at the roof ridge. The vortices behind then building caused by the flow separation at the roof ridge extend along the mixing layer and spread up to the roof. The pressure differences mainly rely on the roof shapes. Greater pressure differences between the upstream, interior and downstream was observed in saltbox roof cases. This is due to the extended roof height which boosted the impinging effect caused by the incoming wind. Generally, the saltbox roof configuration exhibit better performance than gable roof in terms of the measured parameters

Investigation of varying louver angles and positions on cross ventilation in a generic isolated building using CFD simulation

Louvers are an integral component of natural ventilation. This study presents a numerical analysis using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) on cross ventilation in an isolated building equipped with louvers. Opening configurations of (i) center-center, (ii) top-top, (iii) bottom-bottom, (iv) top-bottom and (v) bottom-top (whereby the configurations are defined as ‘windward’-‘leeward’) with varying louver configurations of No-Louver (NL), 0◦, 15◦, 30◦ and 45◦ are studied. Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) condition is applied at the inlet of the flow domain and Renormalization Group (RNG) k-ε turbulence model with enhanced wall function (EWT) is employed for the numerical simulations. Grid sensitivity analysis is performed using Grid Convergence Index (GCI) whilst model validation is performed using Factor of two of observation (FAC2) analysis. The highest dimensionless flow rate (DFR) is achieved by configuration top-top without louvers at 0.719. The highest air exchange efficiency (AEE) is obtained by louver angle of 15◦ for center-center configuration at 53.4%. The lowest AEE obtained is obtained at louver angle of 0◦ for top-top configuration at 20%, indicating short-circuiting of air. For configuration bottom-bottom with louver angle of 30◦, high AEE is obtained but at the cost of reduced DFR. The optimal balance between AEE and DFR can be obtained by factor-optimization (α) as presented in this paper. The study concludes that opening position alongside louver angle plays an integral role on the internal airflow, pressure coefficient, DFR and AEE in natural cross ventilation