An Experimental and Numerical Study of Passive Solar Ventialtion in Buildings

A new bioclimatic building, featuring an integrated solar chimney roof, provided the ideal prototype for design and construction o a 1/12th scale model building and its micro-climate. Laboratory tests and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations of the model allowed the building's performance to be assessed, and together added valuable physical insight into the performance of the proposed passive solar ventilation system. Experimental results also provided the necessary feedback to develop the numerical model, offering a worthwhile alternative to expensive, time consuming full-scale tests