Effect of Wind Speed on Ventilation Flow Through a Two Dimensional Room Fitted With a Windcatcher

Abstract

Natural ventilation is the process of supplying and removing air through an indoor space by natural means. Windcatcher has been used over centuries for providing natural ventilation using wind power, it is an effective passive method to provide healthy and comfortable indoor environment by decreasing moisture content in the air and reducing pollutants concentration. The windcatcher’s function is based on the wind and on the stack effect resulting from temperature differences. Generally, it is difficult for wind to change its direction, and enter a room through usual openings, the windcatcher is designed to overcome such problems since they have vertical columns aimed at helping wind to channel down to the inside of a building. The efficiency of a windcatcher is maximized by applying special forms of opening and exit. The openings depend on the windcatcher’s location and on its cross sectional area and shape such as square, rectangular, hexagonal or circular. In this study the effect of different wind speeds on the total air flow captured by different inlet designs is investigated. To achieve this, CFD (computational fluid dynamics) tool is used to simulate the air flow in a two dimensional room fitted with a windcatcher applying wind speeds from 1 m/s up to 14 m/s and based on different inlet designs such as a uniform inlet, a divergent inlet and a bulging-convergent inlet.