Computational and Experimental Investigation for an Optimal Design of Industrial Windows to Allow Natural Ventilation during Wind-Driven Rain

Kritana Prueksakorn,Taehyeung Kim,Hyunchul Ha,Cheng-Xu Piao

doi:10.3390/su70810499

Kritana Prueksakorn, Taehyeung Kim + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su70810499

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Abstract

With an increased awareness of sustainability issues, natural ventilation has become an elegant method for reducing the costs and environmental effects of the energy that is used to maintain comfortable indoor air quality rather than using mechanical ventilation. The windows in many industrial buildings are continuously open to exhaust pollutants and intake fresh air. Though windows are functional and efficient for natural ventilation, rainwater is able to penetrate through the windows during wind-driven rain. For industries in which the moisture content affects the quality of the product, the intrusion of a large amount of rainwater through windows must be prevented without compromising the effective ventilation. The aim of this research is to determine an innovative design for windows to accomplish the optimum of high ventilation and low rain penetration. For this purpose, windows are variously innovated and tested in full-scale measurements, reduced-scale wind-tunnel measurements and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). An artificial rain and wind velocity to mimic the average of the maximum values in Korea are created. The maximum reduction in rain penetration of over 98% compared to basic 90° open windows is attained with only a 4%–9% decrement of ventilation efficiency in the two recommended designs.

Highlights

Ventilation is used by industrial, residential, and commercial buildings to displace stale and polluted air with fresh external air to maintain a good indoor air quality (IAQ) and thermal comfort
The purpose of this study is to develop a design for windows to achieve the optimum combination of lower rain penetration and higher ventilation for better IAQ and thermal comfort
The comparison is based on the CO2 concentration measured at two center points on either side of the source in the reduced scale and predicted through the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model

Summary

Introduction

Ventilation is used by industrial, residential, and commercial buildings to displace stale and polluted air with fresh external air to maintain a good indoor air quality (IAQ) and thermal comfort. Natural ventilation uses natural forces, i.e., external wind and thermal buoyancy, as the main driving forces to introduce fresh air into the building [5,6]. Because of these natural factors, the ventilation depends on the size, shape and position of the openings such as the doors, windows, louvers, and gravity ventilators [2,7]. These ventilation devices are designed to facilitate the exchange of air without utilizing any energy or forced flow [1,2,8]. To design a building that uses natural ventilation is more difficult than designing a similar building that uses mechanical ventilation because of the natural inconstancy of factors such as the external temperature, wind speed, occupant activities, and internal heating loads [12]

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