Shading louvers are widely used in buildings to protect the indoor environment from excessive heat gain, especially in hot climatic regions. However, few studies mentioned their influences on wind characteristics. As a type of external components on building facades, shading louvers play an important role in wind-induced physical fields, such as wind pressure distribution and airflow pattern. The purposes of this paper are to analyse the impact of computational parameters on simulation results and evaluate the cross-ventilation capacity of a low-rise building with shading louvers. The rotation angle of shading louvers is considered. The simplified engineering model and the coupled indoor and outdoor airflow model are introduced to perform cross-ventilation evaluation. The sensitive analysis shows that the turbulence model has the greatest impact on numerical results. The evaluation of cross ventilation shows that the simplified model fails to quantify the cross-ventilation capacity for some cases. Based on the coupled airflow model, the largest reduction of ventilation rate is up to 66.6%. This study has performed the first sensitive analysis for airflow fields around the building with shading louvers, which provides a detailed simulation guidelines. The results of cross-ventilation capacity influenced by the shading louvers is helpful for ventilation design.

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Wind characteristics on building surfaces are used to evaluate natural ventilation of a building. As a type of building component, external shading louvers are applied in hot climatic regions to block solar radiation and provide better visual environments. The structure of external louvers can affect wind-induced characteristics, such as convective heat transfer coefficient, wind pressure and pollutant dispersion around building envelopes. This paper aims to analyze the potential ventilation capacity of a multi-storey building with shading louvers, based on wind pressure coefficient by the numerical method. A reference case was established and a previous study was applied to validate the numerical results. The rotation angle of horizontal louvers is taken from 0° to 75° in the simulation cases. The results show that average wind pressure has the greatest reduction for all floors when rotation angle turns from 60° to 75°. Ventilation openings on the stagnation zone contribute to higher ventilation rates for the windward facade with louvers. The analysis, based on multi-floor and multi-row buildings under shaded conditions, will provide a greater perspective for engineers to make optimal natural ventilation routes in multi-storey buildings with external shading louvers.