Experimental study on Venturi-type natural ventilator

Abstract

With the vigorous spread of renewable energy, much attention has been paid to natural ventilation. The natural ventilator is usually classified into a passive type and an active type. In this study, the Venturi-type ventilator, which is one of the passive type and basically operated by the Bernoulli’s principle, was experimentally investigated to evaluate the ventilation characteristics according to the outdoor wind velocities and the opening area of a wall. It was confirmed from the experimental results that the ventilation rate of the Venturi-type ventilator was linearly increased and that the ventilation rate was affected by an intake opening area. The wider the intake opening size gets, the more the ventilation rate increases. Furthermore, the new coefficient of β, which reflects the pressure loss from the intake opening to the mixing zone of the Venturi-type ventilator was introduced and experimentally evaluated. The value of β, which was evaluated as about 0.08, provides the simple calculation means to estimate the ventilation rate through the Venturi-type ventilator only if the geometric dimensions are known.