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MONA AZARBAYJANI
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
The concept of DSF is not new and dates back to Even though most of the research has been done
many years ago where in central Europe; many in temperate climate conditions, studies have re-
houses utilized box-type windows to increase ther- vealed a close link between natural ventilation de-
mal insulation (Oesterle, 2000). The double-skin sign and the DSF function. Grabe et al. (2002) de-
faade is an architectural phenomenon driven by veloped a simulation algorithm to investigate the
the aesthetic desire for an all-glass faade and the temperature behavior and flow characteristics of
practical desire to have natural ventilation for im- natural-convection DSFs through solar radiation. It
proved indoor air quality in buildings. Until recently was found that the air temperature increased near
the use of double-skin facades had became more heat sources that are close to window panes and
popular in many high-rise buildings in Europe. shading device. Gratia and Herde (2007a, 2007b,
2007c) attempted to look at natural ventilation
A number of studies, research and several simulation strategies, greenhouse effects, and the optimum
programs have been done on employing the natural position of sun- shading devices for DSFs facing
ventilation in buildings and thermal performance of south in a northern hemisphere temperate climatic.
double skin facades. Most of them have been carried They found that a sufficient day or night ventilation
out for solar chimneys -one way to increment natu- rate can be reached by a window opening, even if
ral ventilation and to improve indoor air quality- and wind characteristics are unfavourable.
Trombe walls prior to double skin facades. Most of
them found out the natural ventilation is possible in METHODOLOGY
summer even for multistory buildings (Wong, 2006).
The potential of using a double faade for natural Natural ventilation is an essential part of sustain-
ventilation of the building in climates other than eu- able building design. Energy conscious designers
rope has not been fully studied though. A number of harness the cooling capacity of natural wind to
interesting investigations and findings are reported increase indoor thermal comfort and ultimately
in the literature pertaining to passive ventilation in save energy for active-space conditioning. Wind
buildings with double-skin facades. can cause air movement and perception of cool-
ing, wind can bring in air of a different temperature
It was found that significant energy savings are and humidity. By numerically solving a series of
possible if natural ventilation could be exploited conservation equations related to mass, momen-
through the use of a double-skin facade (DSF). For tum, and energy, computational fluid dynamics
example, the Loyola University Information Com- (CFD) tools help designers predict detailed airflow
mons and Digital Library in Chicago integrated nat- for special design cases and plan a building with
ural ventilation with a DSF to cool the buildings. optimal natural ventilation.
BEYOND ARROWS 327
To preserve thermal comfort and reduce cooling needed to be solved for the external wind. For this
loads, natural cooling strategies can be incorporated study, only wind direction which is perpendicular to
into buildings. In this study, the behavior of natural the DSF has been considered.
ventilation in a new double skin facade (DSF) config-
uration will be studied. To that end, Fluent, compu- Wind Effects on High Rise Building
tational fluid dynamics software, was used to study
the office airflow path. Developing a CFD model is
In assessing the effects of wind on buildings, it is
a lengthy process. First, EnergyPlus-DesignBuilder
important to consider the characteristic nature of
was used to solve some boundary conditions, such
the wind. The wind is turbulent, and this means
as solar thermal energy. The temperature profile
speed varies with height.
and air velocity within the DSFs cavity and the in-
ternal office space were simulated by Fluent, and, as
Vertical profiles of mean wind speed for boundary
a result, the offices thermal comfort was calculated
layers are approximated by taking the wind speed
and presented. In this study, wind driven ventilation
to be proportional to the height raised to some
improved with stack effect in the noble configura-
power a power law variation (Davenport,1965)
tion of DSF will be tested to see if it can maintain
the simple expression which is used extensively
adequate comfort during summer and spring time
has the form :
in Chicago. The first step would be study the ambi-
Vh=0.35Vmeth0.25
ence which will be used as a boundary conditions in
Where Vh is the local wind speed at height, h,
computational fludid dynamics tool. Initial studies of
and Vmet is the meteorological wind speed. Based
the macroclimate were carried out through Ecotect,
on this formula, wind has been calculated for spe-
which allowed for the efficient visualization of the
cific times that the CFD analysis was performed.
local climatic conditions.
MODEL DESCRIPTION
Domain
Domain material Air at 20C, 1 atm
Reference pressure 100,000 Pa (atmospheric pressure)
Reference temperature 295 K
Sources
Buoyancy model Boussinesq-calculates airflow from temperature
difference rather than density difference.
Cavity Details
Cavity size 3.5 m high by 7 m wide by 1.5 deep.
Cavity external facade Internal plate with surface temperatures on both
sides is calculated based on heat source.
Cavity internal facade External plate with surface temperature base on heat
source.
DSF opening size for inner pane, air gap size (inlet and 300 mm
exhaust).
ry effect, the smaller the size, the more the velocity. where higher-surface temperatures were reached
Figure 4 illustrates the rooms temperature gradient, due to accumulated heat and buoyancy effect.
which is clearly lower than the outside temperature
of 20 C. There is some temperature variation as As illustrated in previous figures, the interior air
the cavity is ventilated. The room air temperature temperature is slightly higher than the exterior
increases towards the top as shown in Figure 4. in the half of the room closer to the cavity and
also in the half upper part. The temperature goes
Figure 5 clearly illustrates an increase in the from 19 C at the bottom opening to about 19.9
gradient temperature from the inlet to the outlet C at the top opening. Figure 6 illustrates how the
BEYOND ARROWS 331
to the stack and outdoors. The airflow is likely Table 3. Calculated air velocity in the office room: 0.5
to be more effective in extracting heat when the meter from the windows and 1 meter from the floor.
wind velocity is high and the temperature gradient
K RNG Turbulence Model
occurs in the shaft increase the buoyancy effect. Run Details Model Results
T cavity
Grid Run
Model iterations inlet and Airflow rate( )
number time
Figure 13 shows how air comes inside the chimney, exhaust
72
5,000,000 1000 13.2 102.5
which is then extracted from the offices through hours
The airflow inside the room is illustrated in figure The office spaces lower floors would generate the
15. The figure shows an air-movement trend from lowest operative temperature due to the stack ef-
laminar close to the wall boundaries to turbulent in fect provided by the DSF configuration. This has
the rooms center. The airflow inside the rooms is enhanced the natural ventilation strategy to pro-
less than 1 m/s and more than 0.1 m/s. vide better internal thermal comfort condition.
Table 2. The simulation results are illustrated in the table There is an internal temperature difference of 1
below: C for the DSF mid-floor, which could be due to
slower internal air velocity generated. The south-
Simulation Floor
Level
Temp
C
Air
Velocity
Radiant
Temp
RH
%
PMV OT
facing DSF configuration produced an 82 percent
May 3 20 0.28 22.93 40.7 0.18 20.22 acceptability limit for the 0.3 m opening for exter-
5 22.4 0.16 22.53 47.3 0.29 20.3 nal temperature 23C, according to the Thermal
June
7
3
24.8
23.7
0.11
0.20
33.64
27
45.59
51.1
0.37
0.5
20.56
20
Environmental Conditions for Human Occupancy
5 24 0.19 37.50 50.68 0.66 21.30 from ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 55-2004.
7 24.6 0.15 27.19 56.60 0.76 21.09
Sep 3 23.4 0.27 26.3 50.3 0.4 24
5 23.7 0.20 26.25 57.40 0.54 25.38
7 24.2 0.13 25.98 56.35 0.71 25.20 Figure 16 shows the PMV ranges for naturally ven-
Oct 3 22 0.27 23.3 36.4 - 22
0.32
tilated spaces with 80 percent acceptable limits in-
5
7
22.3
22.8
0.20
0.19
23.4
24.6
42.4
45.4
0.11
0.23
22.80
22.04
dicated for the third floor in May. This graph shows
334 DIGITAL APTITUDES + OTHER OPENINGS
that there are broader acceptable temperature the ceiling is the avoidance of high air velocities in
ranges for naturally ventilated spaces. Air move- the occupied zone during the day. This study has
ments determine convective heat and mass ex- shown that the combined shaft-corridor DSF has a
change of the human body with the surrounding possibility of providing acceptable internal thermal
air. In the Chicago climate, high air velocities will comfort through natural ventilation strategy in a
increase the evaporation rate at the skin surface, hot summer continental climate.
which results in a cooling sensation. The recom-
mended upper limit of indoor air movement is usu- REFERENCES
ally 0.8 m/s for human comfort; such air velocity
permits the interior space to be 1-2 degrees higher Afonso, C., and Oliveira, A. (2000). A Solar chimneys:
Simulation and experiment. Energy and Buildings,
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Arons, D. (2000). Properties and Applications of Double-
will generate a strong stack effect within the air
Skin Building Facades. MSc thesis in Building
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office space through rear-wall vents. The tempera- (MIT), USA. Web address: http://libraries.mit.edu/docs
ture generated within the office space is then desir- Azarbayjani, M. Energy performance assessment of a
naturally ventilated combined shaft-corridor DSF in
able and close to the human comfort requirement.
an office building in Chicago, ARCC 2011, Detroit
The airflow pattern created will have a good ven- MI.
tilation effect with cool air coming from the vents, Azarbayjani, M. Integration of natural ventilation in high-
and across and above the internal space, and dis- rise building with double skin faade, BESS 2011,
Pamona, CA.
charge through the inner pane high level opening.
Champagne, C. (2002). Computational Fluid Dynamics
and Double Skin Facades. Assignment for the
CONCLUSION Architectural Engineering Computer Labs,
Pennsylvania State University, USA. Web address:
http://www.arche.psu.edu/courses/ae597J/Champage-Hw1.pdf
The simulation of the combined shaft-corridor DSF
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modeling of double skin facades in hot arid
Fluent was used to simulate turbulent airflow. A pro-
climates, 9th International IBPSA Conference
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pressure values at the cavitys openings to model 365-372.
a DSF cavity in a CFD model. This method reduces Hensen, J. 2003. Paper Preparation Guide and Submission
Instruction for Building Simulation 2003 Conference,
computation time that would be needed to ana-
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
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models were used to determine velocities at vari- & Xiaolin, W. (2005). Effects of double glazed
ous points on the building for wind velocity of 5 m/s facade on energy consumption, thermal comfort
and condensation for a typical office building in
based on the weather data. Based on airflow model-
Singapore. Energy & Buildings, 37(6), 563-572.
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movement. Convective forces inside the cavity could and Environment 37, pp. 865-871.
Mitchell, J.W., Beckman, W.A. 1995. Instructions for
be used to promote air extraction from the room, al-
IBPSA Manuscripts, SEL, University of Wisconsin,
though it is needed to promote air movement within Madison, WI.
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simulation of a double skin faade building. 9th
International IBPSA Conference Building Simulation
The CFD results appear to confirm the designs ef-
2005, Vol 2, Montreal (Canada). 831-838.
fectiveness in two ways. First, the airflow follows Oesterle, E., Leib, R.D., Lutz, G., Heusler, B. (2001).
the ceiling and exits through the chimney open- Double skin facades: integrated planning: building
ings, which suggests that the cool night air will physics, construction, aerophysics, air-conditioning,
economic viability, Prestel, Munich.
effectively draw the heat out of the ceiling slab.
Safer, N., Woloszyn M., Roux J.J., Kuznik F.,2005,
The second outcome of the airflow staying near Modeling of the double skin facades for building
BEYOND ARROWS 335