INTERIOR AIRFLOW STUDIES OF PUBLIC HOUSING IN SINGAPORE USING COMPUTATION FLUID DYNAMICS (CFD)

Abstract

90% of the people around the world spend their time indoor and 65% of them are at home. Looking at this statistics in relation to Singapore context, the lower income families who could not afford the air-conditioning will have to depend solely on natural ventilation to meet their comfort level. This scenario urges the public housing premises to have well-ventilated areas to provide healthy and comfortable indoor environment. This dissertation presents a study of how the internal layout of selected Housing and Development Board (HDB) housing units would affect the natural ventilation as a drive for explorations. It focuses on natural ventilation conditions in public housing design and the methods used in Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation program. The purpose of this paper is in two fold, one is to show that CFD can be a useful tool for studying natural ventilation condition and another is to understand how interior elements of housing unit affect ventilation. CFD simulation program was used as a tool to evaluate airflow on HDB standard floor plan to design building for sustainability. A standard layout of 2-room to 5-room unit will be used as a constant factor for the simulation to take place. Varying parameters were carefully determined for CFD simulations to evaluate the airflow within the unit through: window openings configurations, and porosity of interior wall. From the results, the best ventilated scenarios for each layout will be compared and discussed. Suggestions such as the best openings’ configuration, the best interior design and the placement for furniture, will be recommended along with each housing unit to prove that this dissertation met its purposes, aims and objectives.