Study of wind towers with different funnels attached to increase natural ventilation in an underground building

Abstract

Finding ways to cool buildings by natural, passive techniques is crucial in the context of global warming. For centuries, wind towers (traditional windcatchers) have been used in the Middle East for cooling purposes. In this study, the use of funnels at the openings of wind towers for wind ingress and egress is proposed primarily to increase the mass flow captured by the wind tower. The use of funnels in the wind ingress openings increases the inlet area, improving the capture of wind. In parallel, the use of funnels in the egress openings modifies the wake of the tower, which aims to ease the exit of the flow from inside the building. Several design configurations are presented, where the length and width of the funnels are changed and tested separately by computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Results of over 120 CFD simulations are presented and compared. The volumetric flow entering the wind towers increases by 10.7% in several cases. These results indicate that adding funnels to wind towers could positively influence their performance. Changing the dimensions of the funnels affects their efficacy and can increase or decrease the airflow entering the tower.