Strategic design and analysis method of natural ventilation for summer cooling

Abstract

A simplified coupled thermal and airflow model has been developed by integrating the British Standard natural ventilation calculation method for a single zone within a four-node thermal resistance network model, which is called the thermal resistance ventilation model (TRV). By comparison of the results from the TRV with that of the ESP-r program, and subsequently tuning the TRV parameter values, good correlation can be obtained. A two-stage method is proposed for natural ventilation strategic design and analysis. The first stage calculates the constant air rate (CAR) and performs parametric studies in order to propose a design strategy and the appropriate opening area which satisfies thermal comfort. The second stage calculates the dynamic air rate (DAR) and internal temperature and performs analytic studies of the proposed design. An example case has been introduced using this two-stage process. It shows that the method proposed in this paper is simple and straightforward and it is suitable for the strategic design of natural ventilation. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the simplified method can be used to generate detailed and robust comfort data based on both an automatic and a behavioural control model. Practical appilcation: This paper describes a two-stage method to perform parametric and analytic studies of natural ventilation for summer cooling. This method is simple and straightforward, which is suitable for strategic design of natural ventilation. It demonstrates how the simplified method can be used to generate detailed and robust comfort data based on both automatic and behavioural control models.