Cross-ventilation of a room in a courtyard building

Abstract

The influence of courtyard height on the cross-ventilation of a room abating a courtyard building isaddressed in this work. While the cross-ventilation performance of isolated buildings has been thor-oughly documented in the literature, the phenomenon is still not tackled in the context of a courtyardbuilding, both in isolated as well as urban conditions. This has important implications on the design ofsuch buildings (both new and retrofitted). A numerical approach using Computational Fluid Dynamics(CFD) is used to address these challenges. A courtyard model is first validated in 2D and 3D, using variousturbulence models with existing data in order to determine whether a 3D approach is necessary for thisstudy. Three generic buildings having different heights with a room located on the leeward side are thentested. This is performed for an isolated building and an urban scenario. Results show that there is anincrease in the ventilation flow rate with increasing building height. Moreover, this flow is directed fromoutside the building and into the courtyard. This result has been confirmed for all scenarios tested. Theconsideration of rooms located in positions other than the leeward side of the building is left for futureconsideration.