INCIDENCIA DE LA ALTURA EN LA VENTILACIÓN NATURAL EN TORRES DE VIVIENDA

Abstract

The evidence of the intensive urban densification in cities, especially in terms of housing, leads to question about the influence that height has on natural ventilation of the interior spaces. The high computational demand required to develop simulations for the interior space’s ventilation analysis, that achieve precision both in the urban context and in architectural design, has led to ignoring the close relationship between these two scales when discussing wind. However, this research work suggests a simple methodology which, using basic computational resources, allows to show through CFD simulations, and the calculation of a wind speed profile, how the height change can under/over ventilate an interior space, and how much an air outlet opening must decrease or increase its ventilation area to counteract this effect. The simulation of 48 models with different combinations (6 heights, 4 openings, and 2 wind directions), and the calculation of the ventilated area for different ranges of velocities through the drawing of polylines, allowed to identify the need of a differential design for the service openings in housing buildings, due to the low wind speed that were obtained inside the lower floors, compared to the upper levels, where the velocities exceeded the established optimal range.