BIM-BASED COMPUTATIONAL MODELING AND FLUID DYNAMICS SIMULATION FOR PARAMETRIC BUILDING DESIGN IN THE TROPICS

Abstract

The rapid urbanization has caused an increase the concern toward the urban heat island (UHI) effect. Good outdoor ventilation enables the migration of the UHI effect on a large scale. Hence, the objective of this paper is to propose an innovative method for computational modeling of a real urban model to perform computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation in a building information modeling (BIM) -enable platform, so designers could use simulation results in early-stage to enhance the capability of natural ventilation as well as maintain outdoor ventilation at pedestrian’s level. The part center business district (CBD) in Singapore is modeling up in building information modeling (BIM) enabled-platform by auto-generating computational modeling method to perform CFD simulation to obtain the wind environment at the site. A set of residential buildings has been used as an example to find out the effect of newly constructed buildings on the existing wind environment. While the residential buildings would set to different height and width ratios to obtain parametric variables for design in the early stage. The simulation result of the urban city shows the project site is in a low wind velocity zone due to low wind availably at pedestrian’s level and the building blockage could cause uneven air circulation. The site plan would provide the general guide for designing newly constructed buildings. Then comparing the result of three cases has provided a method to enhance wind velocity through the channeling effect which could be created by arrangements of building. The result also suggests a higher H/W ratio could be implemented to increase wind velocity.