The Impact of Opening Sizing on the Airflow Distribution of Double-skin Facade

Abstract

Double-skin facade (DSF) has been widely used in different kinds of architecture as new building envelopes. The position of the shading louver and opening size of the air layer is the key point to thermal performance of DSF. A temperature test, which is in a DSF building in Wuhan, has been conducted in this paper. The ANSYS software has also been used to simulate the velocity and temperature field in the DSF with different opening size. The results show that the test data keeps well accordance with the simulation. Significant differences exist in the velocity and temperature field in DSF with different shading louver position and opening size. The computing results in summer day indicate that as the opening size varies from 0.1m to 0.6m, temperature and velocity of the air in the layer decrease first, then remain the same. Temperature and velocity distribution becomes more regularly with the louver shading in the middle of the layer or near the outside glass than the region close to the inside glass. The testing data in sunny day keeps well accordance with the simulation result, which means the simulation results have certain reliability.