Study of natural ventilation in buildings with large eddy simulation

With the discovery of many economic, environmental, and health problems in sealed and mechanically ventilated buildings, the concept of natural ventilation has been revived. "Buildings that breathe" have become more and more desired by ordinary people and architects. Although natural ventilation is conceptually simple, it is difficult to design and control. At present, methods to study natural ventilation are either inaccurate or costly. This study aims at solving these problems by using large eddy simulation (LES). In LES, a three-dimensional, time-dependent method, the contribution of the large, energy-carrying structures is computed directly and only the smallest scales of turbulence are modeled. This investigation has identified a filtered dynamic subgrid-scale model of LES to study natural ventilation. The experimental data from a wind tunnel, a full-scale test chamber, and other research data have been used to validate the LES program. Methods have been developed to solve the problems encountered in validating LES models for natural ventilation studies. Studying the characteristics of different indoor and outdoor airflows helps to identify the best SGS model for those flows. By comparing the results of using large and small computational domains, an appropriate domain size is recommended to save computing time. It is also found that simulating the transient properties of incoming wind, such as the principal frequency of the turbulent fluctuations, influences the pressure distributions around buildings.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2002

Author dc:creator

• Jiang, Yi, 1972-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Qingyan Chen.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8512

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/8512