THE ROLE OF WIND IN NATURAL VENTILATION SIMULATIONS USING AIRFLOW NETWORK MODELS

Buildings have been naturally ventilated without detailed analyses for hundreds and thousands of years. For many standard and smaller buildings it can be possible to achieve satisfying designs based on experience alone. However, as a means to conserve energy while providing superior thermal comfort, natural ventilation is increasingly considered as a means to ventilate large, complex buildings, including buildings with high loads for which high performance is critical. For these types of buildings it is important to have tools for analysis of design to evaluate a design’s predicted performance in order to achieve high confidence in the design. These tools are described in the present paper as well as a proposed process on designing buildings for natural ventilation. An example case study is discussed