Natural Ventilation Design: Predicted and Measured Performance of a Hostel Building in Composite Climate of India

Abstract

Natural ventilation is recognized for improving the thermal comfort of the built environment and indoor air quality. It provides comfortable conditions for building occupants and reduces energy consumption for air-conditioning. Therefore, it is important to study and explore effective means of ventilation to improve the building designs. This study investigates the thermal comfort of a naturally ventilated hostel operational building in the composite climate of Jaipur, India using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation tool ‘Cradle scSTREAM’. A 3D building model has been developed to analyze the thermal comfort for different natural ventilation strategies with advanced mesh algorithms which generate fewer mesh elements and maintain good mesh quality. A field study was carried out to collect the actual data and to validate the model which was further used to evaluate the thermal comfort range based on the ASHRAE-55 standard. Several design strategies have been applied to enhance thermal comfort. It was found that an increase in air velocity up to 0.5 m/s was achieved by Cross Ventilation while a drop of 2.0–2.5°C in the air temperature was found using Night Ventilation. It can be stated that cross ventilation increases the air movement while night ventilation gives comparatively higher comfort regarding air temperature and relative humidity.