Investigation of the natural ventilation in traditional buildings

Traditional buildings are characterised by the integration of construction requirements and socio-cultural needs of one society. The use of natural resources such as wind for cooling and ventilation provides a remarkable example of such building designs. In this paper, existing analytical and numerical methods investigating the natural ventilation in buildings are introduced and discussed. Weaknesses of common analytical methods, such as envelope flow models for buildings with large openings, are demonstrated. These methods are not suitable for complex building structures. As a result, other methods like CFD-Simulation should be applied. Validations are carried out based on existing experimental measurements consequently. It turns out that the CFD-simulation can produce very good results and can predict the wind flow behavior and buoyancy effect very accurately to certain degree in investigated cases. Furthermore, one application example for further use of CFD in building with wind catcher is presented and discussed. This should serve as the basis for further investigations of natural ventilation for climate and culture adapted constructions.