Night cooling by hybrid supply ventilation – analytical predictions of airflow rates and the ‘hybrid ventilation triangles’

Abstract

Overheating in buildings can be mitigated during periods of excessively warm weather through the application of a night purge ventilation strategy. Building on the mathematical model of Waterson and Hunt (2024), we investigate the emerging field of hybrid ventilation – specifically the rates of airflow achieved by the simultaneous combination of ‘stack-driven’ natural displacement ventilation and a mechanical supply. Whilst the focus of Waterson and Hunt (2024) was specifically on predicting the time taken to complete a purge, herein we focus on airflow rates and in doing so elucidate the somewhat counter intuitive role that the mechanical supply has on the natural ventilation flow rates. Our results challenge the perception that a hybrid approach must be superior to both solely natural and mechanical strategies. Focusing on the variation in airflow rates during a hybrid purge, our model reveals: (i) a hybrid purge offers an improvement over a solely mechanical purge only during one of the two distinct flow regimes identified; and (ii) the manner in which the stack-driven and mechanical components combine is highly nuanced and cannot be predicted by the linear superposition of the constituent stack-driven and mechanical contributions.