Ventilation performance of single zone occupied space in ancient Myanmar multistage roof buildings

Abstract

Roof ventilation gives passive cooling effect in removing hot air from tropical climate buildings. However, little is known about the impacts of building parameters on the passive cooling effect in ancient Myanmar multistage roof buildings. The authors believe that this is the first study to assess the ventilation performance of multistage roof buildings taking into account their typologies, ventilation modes and climatic parameters. This paper presents the ventilation performance of two roof typologies by varying defined parameters from studies in computational fluid dynamic simulations. Simulations were generated by using the 3D steady Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes equations and k-ε turbulence models. The results of CFD studies revealed that the presence of gable vents allowed better indoor air movement although the indoor air turbulence was depended on the intensity of exterior wind speed and roof typology. It was found that the single gable roof buildings increased the indoor airspeed with insignificant indoor air temperature improvement for thermal comfort. The results of this CFD study substantiate the findings of another dynamic simulation study and support the conclusion that the three-stage roof buildings have more potential to improve a better thermal and ventilation performance if they have gable vents.