Beyond arrows: energy performance of a new, naturally ventilated, double-skin facade configuration for a high-rise office building in Chicago
Designers tend to rely on their intuition when designing naturally ventilated buildings without detailed analyses for the long term. It may be argued that for many standard and smaller buildings, designing for natural ventilation is straightforward: a simple process of drawing diagrams to illustrate how air flows within the building, which can achieve satisfactory comfort conditions. However, there is a significant lack of information in the current literature to demonstrate the complexity and challenges in designing large, naturally ventilated buildings. This is especially true when the new double-skin facade (DSF) configuration is used as a means of conserving energy while providing superior thermal comfort. For these types of buildings, it is important to have the tools to evaluate a design’s predicted performance to achieve successful natural ventilation concepts. It has been learned that significant energy saving is possible by exploiting natural ventilation in a DSF configuration. To determine if a DSF configuration will provide a better thermal comfort through natural ventilation, this research uses building simulation tools (EnergyPlus) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to analyze various thermal-comfort parameters through parametric studies in the facade. This thesis presents three significant contributions for the evaluation of natural ventilation in high rise office buildings with DSF configuration: • A methodology for assessing the performance of naturally ventilated DSF buildings through an airflow modeling was developed by three-dimensional analysis using gFluent. Buoyancy, wind, and combined ventilation strategies for a commercial office building with an open floor plan layout were evaluated using the k-ε model. • Models to simulate the specific DSF typology and couple the envelope-level results to a building simulation program. • A framework for comparing and evaluating the conventional facade solution with a new configuration of naturally ventilated DSF.
Double skin facade, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Thermal Comfort, Energy Performance
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign