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WREC 1996

AIR MOVE~IENT IN NATURALLY-VENTILATED BUILDINGS

H.B. Awbi

Department of Construction Management & Engineering


The University of Reading
Reading RG6 6AW, UK

ABSTRACT

The air movement and the distribution of CO2 in naturally ventilated office room and
an atrium is investigated using computational fluid dynamics. The results show that
natural ventilation is capable of achieving acceptable CO2 levels. Adequate comfort
levels could also be achieved for a typical UK summer climate in both types of
buildings. Both wind-driven and buoyancy-driven flows are considered.

KEYWORDS

Natural ventilation; room air movement; CFD; cross-ventilation; single-sided


ventilation.

INTRODUCTION

Natural ventilation is now considered to be one of the requirements for a low energy
building design. Until about three decades ago the majority of office buildings in the
UK were naturally ventilated. With the availability of inexpensive fossil energy and
the tendency to provide better indoor environmental control, there has been a vast
increase in the use of air-conditioning in new and refitrbished buildings. However,
recent scientific evidence on the impact of refrigerants and air-conditioning systems on
the environment has Prompted the more conscious building designers to give serious
considerations to natural ventilation in non-domestic buildings.

The design considerations which ought to be considered in naturally ventilated


buildings have been discussed in a previous paper, Awbi (1994). Two major
difficulties that a designer has to resolve are the questions of air-flow control and room
air movement in the space. In mechanically ventilated spaces, there are well
established techniques for assessing the air movement that a system is expected to
produce, Awbi (1991).

Because of the problem of scaling and the difficulty of representing natural ventilation
in a laboratory, most of the methods used for predicting the air movement in

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mechanically ventilated buildings are not very suitable for naturally ventilated spaces.
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is becoming increasingly used for the design of
both mechanical and natural ventilation systems, Gan and Awbi (1994). Since a CFD
solution is based on the fundamental flow and energy equations, the technique is
equally applicable to a naturally ventilated space and a mechanically ventilated space
providing that a realistic representation of the boundary conditions are made in the
solution.

In this paper, the CFD program VORTEX is used to study the air movement, the
thermal quality and the air quality in a typical mid-floor office space and an atrium
building. Simulations are presented for summer and winter. In addition to the air
velocity and temperature distribution in the space, detailed thermal comfort analysis is
also presented. Simulated occupancy is used to calculate the CO2 concentration in the
space which provides an indication of the indoor air quality under each condition.

FLOW EQUATIONS

.Wind

The volume flow rate (Q) through a large opening is given by:

Q = CdA 112~P (1)

where Ca is the discharge coefficient, A is the area, p is the density and Ap is the
pressure difference which is given by:
Ap = 0.5 p VrCp (2)
where Vr is the reference wind speed and Cp is the pressure coefficient at the opening.

For a number of openings in parallel:


Cd A = ~(Ca A)i (3)
and for a number of openings in series:
1 1
(4)
CdA)2 -- 2- CfA)
Further details are given in Awbi (1994).

Buoyancy

The volume flow rate through a large opening due to temperature difference is given
by (see Appendix A):
Q -cd

where AT is the temperature difference across the opening and ~" is the mean
temperature (K).

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WREC 1996
DESCRIPTION OF BUILDINGS

To assess the applicability of CFD to naturally ventilated buildings, two buildings


have been selected. One is an office building and the other is an atrium.

Office Room

An office room in an intermediate floor of a multi-storey building has been selected for
investigation. The room dimensions are 12m x 10m x 2.5m and has four openable
windows of height 2m and width lm on each of the 12m walls, as shown in Fig. I. It
has been assumed that summer ventilation is achieved by opening the windows and
winter ventilation is achieved by trickle ventilators (1 m x 0.01 m each) above and
below each window with all windows closed.

r-i r-l rm FT_Qfl


/ ', I I I I I I ~6~I I
/ ', I I I I I I /I I I
/ I L_I L _I L_6~ L_I I
J l lilt- ............. ,

.-'" .o _~,~

2,5 "" / "t 2.0 .

- )

12,0m

Figure 1: Office Room

The air quality in the office is investigated using CFD by considering the distribution
of CO2 from 6 seated occupants (0.0047 1/s each) at a height of 1.05 m. Two
situations were considered: a wind-driven ventilation (cross-ventilation) and
buoyancy-driven ventilation (single-sided ventilation). The total heat gain in the
summer is 6.224 kW which is uniformly distributed over the floor (51.9 W/m2) when
all the windows are open (cross-ventilation) and 50 W/m2 on the floor and 40 W/m2 on
the closed windows for single-sided ventilation. In winter, the heat loss from the two
external walls is 10 W/m2 (i.e. a total heat loss of about 500 W). A window surface
temperature of 10°C is assumed giving a total heat loss from the windows of about
350 W. In winter, four of the upper slots were used for the air supply and the other
four for the extract when the flow is wind-driven. In this case, a floor heating system
is assumed to produce an output of 22 W/m2. For the buoyancy-driven ventilation,
the lower slots were used for the air supply and the upper ones for the extract. In
this case, heat convectors each producing 1.64 kW were placed below each window to
heat the incoming air which is supplied just behind the convector.

Atrium

An atrium of dimensions 10m x 20m x 15m high has been selected for this study, see
Fig. 2. It has been assumed that the 2.0 m x 2.4 m door, which is situated on the 15m
wall, is always kept open. Only summer conditions have been simulated for the
atrium since the main concern is smnmer overheating. A total heat gain of 80 kW is

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WREC 1996
assumed uniformly distributed over the floor (400 W/m2). Two conditions have been
simulated: one with wind flow through the door and the other is a buoyancy-driven
ventilation through the door and roof openings. The atrium is equipped with two lm
x lm vertical openings near the roof and two horizontal openings on the roof, lm x 2
m each. It has been assumed that the small openings are always open but the large
openings are open during the buoyancy-driven flow only. The CO2 produced by 126
occupants is uniformly distributed at a height of 1.9 m.

sz~ J
r,c
15.0m
Figure 2: Atrium Building

CFD PROGRAM

The CFD program VORTEX has been used to study the air movement, thermal
comfort and air quality in the two buildings investigated. This program has been
specifically developed for the built environment and details of the program are given
by Gan and Awbi (1994).

RESULTS

Office Room

Summer Ventilation. All the office windows were assumed open for the cross-
ventilation and the four windows on one wall were assumed open for the single-sided
ventilation. For the cross-ventilation a wind speed of 2 rods was assumed to enter the
window uniformly with a temperature of 22°C. For the single-sided ventilation, the

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WREC 1996
air flow through the lower part of the opening was calculated by the CFD program
using equation (1) with a discharge coefficient of 0.61 for the opening. The flow rate
through the window openings as calculated by the CFD program was 11.2 m3/s for the
cross-ventilation, assuming a discharge coefficient of 1. However, if equations (1) and
(2) were used, a lower flow rate was obtained as equation (2) requires a reference wind
speed and not the speed at the opening. Therefore, further CFD simulations were
carried out to obtain some correlation between the two wind speeds and, on average, it
was found that the wind speed at the openings was about half that at a reference point
upstream of the building. The same flow rate can be obtained using equations (1) and
(2) ifVr = 4 m/s and ACv = 0.7 were used. For single-sided ventilation the flow rate
entering the room through the four window openings on one wall as calculated by the
CFD program is 1.98 m3/s compared with 0.48 mS/s from equation (5). For eight
window openings the results are 3.16 and 0.73 m3/s respectively. In the CFD
simulation, a uniform speed was assumed across the whole opening whereas in
equation (5) the speed across the opening is not uniform, see Appendix (A). If the
CFD flow rate is multiplied by 2/3 to allow for the non-uniform profile, flow rates of
0.80 and 1.28 m3/s are obtained for the 4-window and 8-window openings
respectively. The conditions in the room for the two methods of ventilation is
summarised in Table 1. In this table the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and the
Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied (PPD) are also given for the occupied zone (1.8 m
hi#).

Table 1. Summer conditions in office room


Wind Buoyancy
4-windows 8-windows
Air flowrate (m%) 11.20 1.98 3.16
Air speed at opening (m/s) 2.00 0.71 0.56
Air temperature at opening(°C) 22.0 22.0 22.0
Mean air speed in occupiedzone (m/s) 0.47 0.14 0.14
Mean temp in occupied zone (°C) 22.5 25.5 23.6
Mean PMV in occupiedzone 0.02 1.38 0.97
Mean PPD in occupied zone (%) 10.1 45.9 27.1
,Meanco2 concentrationin occupiedzone (ppm) 351.8 362.2 358.2

Winter Ventilation. The results for winter ventilation are given in Table 2. It can be
seen that adequate thermal comfort is achieved using the trickle ventilators for the
wind-driven ventilation but the comfort for the buoyancy-driven ease is not adequate,
i.e. more heating and or smaller ventilation openings will be required. The CO2 in both
cases is low.
Table 2. Winter conditions in office room
Wind Buoyancy
Air flow rate (mS/s) 0.08 0.31
Air speed at opening (m/s) 2.0 3.9
Air temperatureat opening (°C) 5.0 5.0
Mean air speed in occupiedzone (m/s) 0.09 0.09
Mean temp in occupied zone (°C) 22.6 19.0
Mean PMV in occupied zone 0.17 -1.5
Mean PPD in occupied zone (%) 6.4 50.9
Mean CO2 concentrationin occupiedzone (ppm) 629.3 498

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WREC 1996
Atrium

The atrium results for wind-driven and buoyancy-drivenventilation are summarised in


Table 3 for summer condition. The table shows that both methods of ventilation can
achieve adequate air movement in the atrium with mean air speeds in the occupied
zone of 0.61 and 0.80 m/s. Although the mean temperature in the occupied zone is
about 27°C, this will be offset by the high air speed and the comfort level will be
acceptable for short occupancy periods such as normally found in atria. The CO2
concentration in the occupied zone is low.

Table 3. Summer conditions in atrium


Wind Buoyancy
Air flowrate (m3/s) 9.60 12.99
Air speed at opening(m/s) 2.00 2.71
Air temperatureat opening(°C) 22.0 22.0
Meanair speedin occupiedzone(m/s) 0.61 0.80
Mean tempin occupiedzone(°C) 26.2 27.0
Mean C02 concentrationin occupiedzone(ppm) 395.2 389.5

CONCLUSIONS

The CFD results have shown that adequate ventilation rates can be achieved through
an atrium with an open door and roof extract openings for typical UK summer
conditions. In the absence of wind, buoyancy was found to be capable of removing
solar heat gain and dilute COz levels to acceptable comfort and air quality levels. The
results for the office room have shown that acceptable conditions can be achieved for
typical summer and winter climates by opening windows or using trickle ventilators.
However, the flow rates through window openings, due to wind in eross-ventilation
and buoyancy in single-sided ventilation, were over-estimated by the CFD
calculations when compared with calculations based on simple formulae for wind-
driven and buoyancy-driven ventilation. For wind-driven flow, the difference was
attributed to the values of reference wind speed and pressure coefficients which have
been used in the formula. For the buoyancy-drivenflow however, this was due to the
velocity profile through an opening which has not been considered in the CFD
simulations.

REFERENCES

Awbi, H.B. (1994). Design considerations for naturally ventilated buildings.


Renewable Energy, 5, 1081-1090.

Awbi, H.B. (1991). Ventilation of Buildings, Spun, London

Gan, G. And Awbi, H.B. (1994). Numerical simulation of the indoor environment,
Building and Environment, 29, 449-459.

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WREC 1996
APPENDIX (A)

The pressure difference due to temperature difference across a large opening is:
Ap(z) = Ap g z (A. 1)
where Ap is the difference in density across Z
the opening, z is the height and g is the
acceleration of gravity.

Also, u(z) = "~2Ap(z)/9


H ...... u(z) , y _ _ ....
Hence, u(z) pc z 1/2

7--iz
u(z) = [ H I 112
and
Umax
The mean velocity ( u ) through an opening of height (h) is:
Umax Izl/2 Ureax 2H3/2 -23 H Ureax
u - H 112 dz - H I/2 3 = (A.2)
The volume flow rate through the opening (Q) is:

Q=Cawu=2Ce wHUmax _- 32 C d AUmax (A.3)


where w is the width of the opening.

However, in a buoyancy-driven flow, the equal masses of air enter and leave through
the same opening. If H is the total height of the opening, then the influx or effiux
flow is:

Q = _C~ A Um~ (A.4)


From equation (A. 1) it follows that:
Cd I g H - A T (1.5)
e=~-

where AT is the temperature difference across the opening and q" is the mean
temperature (K).

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