Research On Building Configuration Adapt To Natural Ventilation

Green architecture is a development trend in the future， Energy-efficientbuildings is the mainstream of today’s society. Building environment is veryimportant for people’s safety, health, thermal comfort and productivity. With themodern technology developed, we can use mechanical methods making the buildingenvironment more convenient. Mechanical methods are emphasized artificially createa so-called thermal comfort building environment, Simultaneously，will generate alot of building energy consumption. To overcome the shortages of mechanicalmethods, under the guidance of green building concept, natural ventilation methodsare emphasized and respected.Natural ventilation is to make the air flow relying onthe wind pressure and the thermal pressure caused by the temperaturedifference.Compared with the mechanical ventilation,natural ventilation doesn’tneed complex ventilation equipment and special power. But wind pressure andthermal pressure in natural ventilation are unstable, sometimes be unexpected less anddifficult to control. The purpose of using natural ventilation is to reduce energyconsumption and save energy to replace refrigeration and air conditioning system incertain areas, certain conditions, certain period of time.For an architect, an urgent andprimary task is to improve the built environment in satisfactory condition at the sametime make the best of building energy consumption to a minimum, so the "natural firstand second mechanical" approach should be given priority. In order to achieve lowbuilding energy consumption and have a good air quality, optimization on buildingstructure should start from the initial design work. We should pay more attention onoptimizing the configuration of the building so that the building can better adapt tonatural ventilation, so we can use as large as possible (including controls) the forcesof nature, to save energy.Thermal pressure and wind pressure are the motive power of building natural ventilation,they are not constant and sometimes be unexpected less. Only the resistance of air flow within thebuilding is very small can air be well circulated in the building. So the main problem and thecrucial work of building configuration design for natural ventilation is to arrange the air tunnel (orpassageway) reasonably including following items: optimal establishment of ventilation shaft andair tunnel including position, number, dimension, wall roughness, etc.; optimal allocation of air inlet and outlet including position, number, dimension, coefficient of resistance, etc.; In order tomake the ventilation adjustable, air valves and dampers in the air passageway are necessary.In this paper, some building configurations (Ventilation shaft, Solar chimney,underlying overhead and their allocation) adapt to natural ventilation have been suggestedand discussed. Different ventilation effect depends on different thermal pressure and windpressure has been studied and presented by simulation (Fluent and Airpak) work. Multi-schemecomparison and optimization have been done by utilizing some evaluation indexes such asADPI(Air Diffusion Performance Index), Air exchange efficiency(or times of air exchange), Airage, PMV, PPD,etc.. Further, research on regional adaptation has been also done by selecting fourdifferent meteorological regions in China from east to west (Shanghai, Wuhan, Xi’an and Urumqi).Base on our research work, some building configurations adapt to natural ventilation can beobtained and demonstrated. It is convinced of that this kind of research work is valuable andhelpful to the design work of energy efficient building and green building.