THE EFFECT OF DIFFERENT BUILDING SHAPES ON NATURAL VENTILATION OF PUBLIC HOUSING IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Wind or air movement as one of the climatic parameters was taken as the basic variable for the study of natural ventilation. To achieve an optimum performance of natural ventilation, the design of the building should be able to integrate with the surrounding environment, which is in this case wind movement or pattern, in terms of its pressure, velocity, and predominant direction. The public housing in Singapore, known as HDB flat has been adopting natural ventilation, therefore it is necessary to conduct a research to improve the design of the building in order to achieve optimum natural ventilation. The shapes of the building play a significant part in affecting the air movement within the site and the indoor air distribution. The purpose of this study is to obtain the effective building shape for optimum air change rate in terms of natural ventilation performance that leads to thermal comfort and well being of the occupant. Extensive analysis was done based on the data output from wind tunnel studies and CONTAM96 simulations. L-shape block is found as the most effective building shape to provide the highest mean air change rate, compared to the other three building shapes i.e. Linear, Point block, and U-shape.