The Effects of Void on Natural Ventilation Performance in Multi-Storey Housing

Fakhriah Muhsin,Mohd Mohamed,Wardah Mohammad Yusoff,Abdul Sapian

doi:10.3390/buildings6030035

Fakhriah Muhsin, Mohd Mohamed + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings6030035

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Abstract

Enhancing natural ventilation performance in multi-storey housing is very important for the living environment in terms of health and thermal comfort purposes. One of the most important design strategies to enhance natural ventilation in multi-storey housing is through the provision of voids. A void is a passive architectural feature, which is located in the middle of deep plan buildings. It is very crucial to consider the configurations of voids in the buildings for enhancing natural ventilation, especially for multi-storey housing. In this study, Malaysian Medium Cost Multi-Storey Housing (MMCMSH), which is an example of multi-storey housing located in a suburban area, has been selected in this study. This study aims to investigate the potential of void for enhancing natural ventilation performance in multi-storey housing by the comparison of two different void configurations. Field measurement of MMCMSH has been conducted to validate Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) model and Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) is an important parameter for setting up the CFD Model’s domain. Ventilation rate (Q), which is necessary for comfort and health reasons, is an important parameter for the comparison of the different void configurations. This study revealed that the provision of void can enhance natural ventilation performance in multi-storey housing with an increase in the value of Q, from 3.44% to 40.07%, by enlarging the void’s width by 50% compared to the existing void.

Highlights

In the housing industry, natural ventilation has been of increasing concern, in terms of energy savings, economic considerations and sustainability in the built environment [1,2,3,4]
The methodology chosen for this study was a Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulation of Malaysian medium cost multi-storey housing (MMCMSH), which is validated with field measurement data
Sliding door on functions as an inlet opening ofthus, the living unit of Important to note that this study only focused on model wind‐driven ventilation, of thermal-driven ventilation arefunctions excluded

Summary

Introduction

Natural ventilation has been of increasing concern, in terms of energy savings, economic considerations and sustainability in the built environment [1,2,3,4]. Multi-storey housing is the building type chosen for investigating natural ventilation performance inside a building. Previous studies stated that achieving comfortable and healthy living environments with minimal energy consumption, especially when dealing with natural ventilation performance in buildings, is a challenge in designing multi-storey housing [9,11]. Most multi-storey housing does not really have a good control over natural ventilation performance to achieve a healthy and comfortable living environment [7,12]. This arises due to the difficulty of predicting natural

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