Wind tunnel experiments on wind-induced natural ventilation rate in residential basements with areaway space

Abstract

In residential building design, areaways can act as an open subsurface space to help improve the living environment in adjacent basements for residential purposes, mainly by wind-induced natural ventilation. The accurate prediction of effective air change rate is quite important; nevertheless so far little is known about this kind of ventilation issue. In order to acquire more knowledge in this field and make accurate ventilation predictions, direct measurement of ventilation rate was performed in this study using small-scale wind tunnel models. In the experiment, considering ventilation induced only by the exterior wind, we applied the constant tracer gas flow technique to measure the time-averaged ventilation rate for nine wind directions for each case. Furthermore, the relationships between the ventilation rate and a variety of parameters including wind direction, opening type, plan area of the areaway space and building coverage ratio, etc. were investigated and analyzed in detail. The findings of the present study can provide fundamental data for the design of areaway space in the urban residential buildings.