Investigation and numerical simulation of the wind effects on thermal comfort in a house

Abstract

Full-scale measurement of indoor thermal factors and numerical simulation of indoor air flow are presented in this paper. The measurement was carried out in summer in two dwelling units of an apartment building; one was ventilated naturally through opening windows and the other was unventilated. Indoor thermal conditions of these two houses were estimated by the predicted mean vote and compared to find that the thermal conditions in the ventilated house ranged in the comfort zone while it was in the hot zone in the unventilated house, which depended upon the indoor air flow speed. Numerical simulation of indoor and outdoor air flow of a single unit house was carried out to predict the air flow speed by natural ventilation through opening windows. Multi-mesh system and k-a 2-equation model were applied for the indoor and the outdoor turbulent air flow for which the scales were greatly different.