Improving Residential Wind Environments by Understanding the Relationship between Building Arrangements and Outdoor Regional Ventilation

Abstract

This paper explores the method of assessing regional spatial ventilation performance for the design of residential building arrangements at an operational level. Three ventilation efficiency (VE) indices, Net Escape Velocity (NEV), Visitation Frequency (VF) and spatial-mean Velocity Magnitude (VM), are adopted to quantify the influence of design variation on VE within different regional spaces. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method is applied to calculate VE indices mentioned above. Several residential building arrangement cases are set to discuss the effect of different building length, lateral spacing and layouts on four typical space patterns under wind directions oblique or perpendicular to the main (long) building facade. The simulation results prove that NEV, VF and VM are useful VE indices, which can reflect different features of flow pattern in studied regional domains. Preliminary parametric studies indicate that wind direction might be the most important factor for improving spatial ventilation. When the angle between main building facade and wind direction is more than 30 • , ventilation of different exterior spaces could improve evidently. When wind direction is perpendicular to main building façade, decreasing building length can increase NEV of the middle space by 50%, while decreasing lateral spacing would decrease NEV of the intersection space by 35%.

Impact of Residential Building Layouts on Microclimate in a High Temperature and High Humidity Region

“…Numerical models that ignore the influence of the model boundary tend to exaggerate the wind conditions and cause inaccuracies in the thermal environment [19]. To alleviate this exaggeration, many studies use a surrounding environment model to act as a buffer zone around the research area [20]. In this paper, we added a block around the study area and a model of 3 × 3 building group blocks was used for the simulation, as shown in Figure 2a.…”

Recent Advances in Urban Ventilation Assessment and Flow Modelling

“…The paper by You et al [6] assessed regional spatial ventilation performance for optimizing residential building arrangements. The ventilation index net escape velocity (NEV) was employed to quantify the influence of design variation on ventilation efficiency within four typical spaces, which refer to space form, size and position changing.…”