Impact of Urban Morphology on Infiltration-Induced Building Energy Consumption

Andrius Jurelionis and Demetri G. Bouris
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Andrius Jurelionis: Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Kaunas University of Technology, Studentu str. 48, 51367 Kaunas, Lithuania
Demetri G. Bouris: School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 15780 Zografou, Greece

Energies, 2016, vol. 9, issue 3, 1-13

Abstract: External air movement within built neighborhoods is highly dependent on the morphological parameters of buildings and surroundings, including building height and street cavity ratios. In this paper, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods were applied to calculate surface pressure distributions on building surfaces for three city models and two wind directions. Pressure differences and air change rates were derived in order to predict the heating load required to cover heat losses caused by air infiltration. The models were based on typical urban layouts for three cities, and were designed of approximately equal built volumes and equal air permeability parameters. Simulations of the three analyzed building layouts resulted in up to 41% differences in air change rates and heat losses caused by air infiltration. In the present study, wind direction did not have a significant impact on the relative difference between the models, however sideward wind direction caused higher air change rates and heat losses for all simulated layouts.

Keywords: urban airflow; computational fluid dynamics (CFD) predictions; air infiltration; energy performance of buildings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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