Numerical study of wind environment of a low-rise building with shading louvers: sensitive analysis and evaluation of cross ventilation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Shading louvers are widely used in buildings to protect the indoor environment from excessive heat gain, especially in hot climatic regions. However, few studies mentioned their influences on wind characteristics. As a type of external components on building facades, shading louvers play an important role in wind-induced physical fields, such as wind pressure distribution and airflow pattern. The purposes of this paper are to analyse the impact of computational parameters on simulation results and evaluate the cross-ventilation capacity of a low-rise building with shading louvers. The rotation angle of shading louvers is considered. The simplified engineering model and the coupled indoor and outdoor airflow model are introduced to perform cross-ventilation evaluation. The sensitive analysis shows that the turbulence model has the greatest impact on numerical results. The evaluation of cross ventilation shows that the simplified model fails to quantify the cross-ventilation capacity for some cases. Based on the coupled airflow model, the largest reduction of ventilation rate is up to 66.6%. This study has performed the first sensitive analysis for airflow fields around the building with shading louvers, which provides a detailed simulation guidelines. The results of cross-ventilation capacity influenced by the shading louvers is helpful for ventilation design.