Natural ventilation simulation with coupling program between building simulation (BS) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation program for accurate prediction of indoor thermal environment

Abstract

There is no available tool to better predict natural ventilation design. In order to accurately and quickly assess the natural ventilation, the coupling program between building simulation (BS) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation is developed. Coupling program was validated with two different methods: full CFD simulation and field measurement. In the full CFD validation, a multi-zone case was investigated to validate coupling simulation results with full CFD results. In the field measurement validation, the measuring results for a typical naturally ventilated HDB building in Singapore has been used to compare with coupling simulation results. It was concluded that the building simulation alone is difficult to accurately predict indoor thermal environment. This paper suggest that coupling program between BS and CFD is able to accurately and quickly predict natural ventilation by taking pressure boundary conditions for indoor CFD simulation.