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World Engineers Summit – Applied Energy Symposium & Forum: Low Carbon Cities & Urban
Energy Joint Conference, WES-CUE 2017, 19–21 July 2017, Singapore

Performance
Theevaluation of air
15th International flow and
Symposium thermal
on District comfort
Heating in the room
and Cooling
with Wind-Catcher using different CFD techniques under neutral
Assessing the feasibility of using the heat demand-outdoor
Atmospheric Boundary Layer
temperature function for a long-term district heat demand forecast
a a b
Ijaz Fazil Syeda,b,c
Ahmed Kabir
a
*, Sivamoorthy
a
Kanagalingam
b
, Ferozkhan
c
Safiyullah
c
I. Andrić *, A. Pina , P. Ferrão , J. Fournier ., B. Lacarrière , O. Le Corre
a
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, 639798,
a
IN+ Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research -Singapore
Instituto Superior Técnico, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
b
Department
b of Mechanical
Veolia Recherche Engineering,
& Innovation,Universiti
291 AvenueTeknologi PETRONAS,
Dreyfous Tronoh,
Daniel, 78520 31750,
Limay, Malaysia
France
c
Département Systèmes Énergétiques et Environnement - IMT Atlantique, 4 rue Alfred Kastler, 44300 Nantes, France

Abstract
Abstract
Energy usage in buildings using conventional Heat Ventilation Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems can be considerably reduced on
using natural
District ventilation
heating networkssystems like windaddressed
are commonly catcher. in
In the
addition to high
literature energy
as one consumptions
of the in conventional
most effective solutions for HVAC, other
decreasing the
disadvantages include ozone layer depletion due to CFCs emitted and also cost involved in installation and maintenance.
greenhouse gas emissions from the building sector. These systems require high investments which are returned through the heat Purpose
ofsales.
this study wasthe
Due to to changed
investigate the airflow
climate and thermal
conditions comfortrenovation
and building analyses ofpolicies,
existing heat
common windincatcher
demand designcould
the future in thedecrease,
city of
Yazd using the
prolonging computational fluid period.
investment return dynamics (CFD) technique. In order to have more realistic analysis, neutral homogenous
atmospheric
The main scopeboundary
of thislayer
paper(ABL) was created
is to assess at the inlet.
the feasibility Standard
of using k-e turbulence
the heat model was
demand – outdoor used since
temperature equations
function for creating
for heat demand
ABL were more related to this model. 3D CFD analysis was performed using both ANSYS FLUENT and OPENFOAM. Thermal
forecast. The district of Alvalade, located in Lisbon (Portugal), was used as a case study. The district is consisted of 665
comfort analysis was evaluated based on ASHRAE standard 55.
buildings that vary in both construction period and typology. Three weather scenarios (low, medium, high) and three district
renovation scenarios were developed (shallow, intermediate, deep). To estimate the error, obtained heat demand values were
© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
compared with results from a dynamic heat demand model, previously developed and validated by the authors.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the World Engineers Summit – Applied Energy Symposium &
The results showed that when only weather change is considered, the margin of error could be acceptable for some applications
Forum: Low Carbon Cities & Urban Energy Joint Conference.
(the error in annual demand was lower than 20% for all weather scenarios considered). However, after introducing renovation
scenarios, the error value increased up to 59.5% (depending on the weather and renovation scenarios combination considered).
Keywords: Wind-Catcher;Thermal Comfort; Atmospheric Boundary Layer
The value of slope coefficient increased on average within the range of 3.8% up to 8% per decade, that corresponds to the
decrease in the number of heating hours of 22-139h during the heating season (depending on the combination of weather and
renovation scenarios considered). On the other hand, function intercept increased for 7.8-12.7% per decade (depending on the
coupled scenarios). The values suggested could be used to modify the function parameters for the scenarios considered, and
improve the accuracy of heat demand estimations.

© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of The 15th International Symposium on District Heating and
Cooling.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +65-85152807
E-mail address: ijaz0001@e.ntu.edu.sg
Keywords: Heat demand; Forecast; Climate change
1876-6102 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the World Engineers Summit – Applied Energy Symposium &
Forum: Low Carbon Cities & Urban Energy Joint Conference.
1876-6102 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of The 15th International Symposium on District Heating and Cooling.
1876-6102 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the World Engineers Summit – Applied Energy Symposium & Forum: Low
Carbon Cities & Urban Energy Joint Conference.
10.1016/j.egypro.2017.12.671
200 Ijaz Fazil Syed Ahmed Kabir et al. / Energy Procedia 143 (2017) 199–203
2 Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000

1. Introduction

The disadvantages of the conventional Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning (HVAC) in buildings include high
electricity consumption, installation and maintenance cost. Also, the application of HVAC results in environmental
hazards such as high usage of fossil fuels, emission of CFCs which contribute to Ozone layer depletion [1]. It has been
reported that 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions are due to the energy consumed in the buildings [2]. Therefore, it
is necessary to provide significant importance for natural, environmental friendly and low cost ventilation to supply
fresh air and maintain comfortable indoor temperature.
Wind-catchers were part of the buildings in Middle east over many centuries to provide natural ventilation and
cooling. wind catcher provides natural ventilation due to wind effect and stack buoyancy effect. Wind effect is the
primary driving mechanism and is due to the pressure difference on the windward side and leeward side of the wind-
catcher. Wind that enters along windward side removes the heat from the occupants via convective and evaporative
heat transfer and thus results in cooling. Buoyancy effect is the secondary effect in which hot and dense air moves
upward and cold and high dense air moves downward [3-5].
Our work is concerned on the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis of the performance of wind-catcher
in the neutral atmospheric boundary layer which replicates the real-time scenario.
To authors’ knowledge, Awbi and Elmualim [6-8] initiated the CFD analysis of the performance evaluation of
wind-catcher in the early 2000s. In 2008, Bahadori et al. [9] examined two new designs of wind-catchers,
experimentally and compared their performance with a conventional wind catcher in the city of Yazd, Iran, in terms
of air temperature leaving the tower and airflow rate. Though there are various CFD analyses were performed on the
wind-catcher performance evaluation in the recent years, notable analyses were done by Montazeri et al. [10-11]
Calautit et al. [13-15].
According to Hosseini et al. [16], the previous studies on wind-catcher was on the design and their ventilation
performance while the thermal comfort on using wind-catcher was not investigated. In 2013, Reyes et al. [17] and in
2016, Hosseini et al. [16] has studied airflow distribution and thermal comfort on using wind-catcher but in two
dimensional for the region of Mexico and Yazd respectively. But Reyes et al. [17] and Hosseini et al. [16] used similar
geometry and boundary conditions and employed ANSYS FLUENT for their CFD analysis. This work concern on the
extension on the work of Hosseini et al. [16] to three dimensional in a neutral atmospheric boundary layer.

2. CFD Modelling Set up

We were concerned on three issues in the work of Hosseini et al. [16].

 Two -dimensional (2D) analysis- In real-time air flow within and around the building would be three-dimensional
(3D).
 Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL)- Reyes et al. [17] work was based on Mexico while Hossieni et al. [16]
work was concerned on Yazd, Iran. Two different places would have different roughness length and wind shear
in the ABL differs.
 Principle- As mentioned in introduction, wind-catcher works based on pressure difference between the windward
and leeward side of wind-catcher. In the work of Hosseini et al. [16] inlet velocity seems to be applied directly at
the opening of windward side of the wind-catcher. Hence, we are concerned on prediction of pressure difference
by this model will it be close to the pressure difference raised by real-time flow.
Figure 1a shows the geometry and boundary conditions employed by Hosseini et al. [16] in their work. Figure 1b
shows the computational domain (200m x 20m x 20m) of ABL created in this study. Governing equation of the mean
wind speed, turbulence kinetic energy, turbulent dissipation rate and also roughness length for the neutral ABL can be
found in the reference [17-21]. Detailed discussion on the choice of boundary conditions is not explained here but one
of the authors in his other work [21] has explained in clear. Since the city of Yazd is considered to be desert, roughness
length was chosen to be 0.001m in this study. ANSYS FLUENT and OpenFOAM CFD solvers were used in this study.
 Ijaz Fazil Syed Ahmed Kabir et al. / Energy Procedia 143 (2017) 199–203 201
Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000 3

Fig. 1. (a) CFD set up for wind-catcher simulation by Hosseini et al. [16]; (b) CFD set up for ABL and 3D flow in this study

3. Results and Discussion

3.1. Comparison of Velocity Profiles between FLUENT and OpenFOAM analysis

Figure 2 shows the inlet velocity profile because of wind shear in the ABL. Figure 2a is from FLUENT analysis
and Figure 2b is plotted from OpenFOAM analysis. It can be incurred that velocity distribution from both the solvers
appear to be similar. Hence, further analysis in this section will be based only on results from FLUENT analysis.

Fig. 2. (a) Inlet velocity profile from FLUENT; (b) Inlet velocity profile from OpenFOAM

3.2. Thermal Comfort

According to ASHRAE 55-2013[22], thermal comfort is defined as the psychological condition of satisfaction in
relation to the thermal environment. Fangler [23] method is the most commonly used method in the analysis of thermal
comfort. Since this work is considered as an extension of Hosseini et al. [16], the room is divided similarly into 15
zones but in three dimensional. Since CBE online tool was used by Hosseini et al. [16], we have used the same tool
202 Ijaz Fazil Syed Ahmed Kabir et al. / Energy Procedia 143 (2017) 199–203
4 Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000

for the computation of Predicted Mean Value (PMV). Average temperature and average velocity were computed from
CFD results for each zone while the other values like relative humidity (18%), mean radiant temperature (32oC),
metabolic rate (1.1 met) and clothing insulation (0.5 clo) were retained from the work of Hosseini et al. [16]. Figure
3 shows the different zones along the midplane of the room (wind-catcher in not shown) and their corresponding
average temperature, average air velocity, PMV and their corresponding thermal comfort sensation prediction from
CBE tool. In general, if PMV value between -0.5 and 0.5 is comfort (green mark in Figure 3) but still if the value is
between -1 and 1 is satisfactory (yellow mark in Figure 3).

Fig. 3. Room’s Thermal Comfort Zones

4. Conclusion and future works

This work was considered to be a preliminary work. In this work, 2D study of Hosseini et al. [16] was extended to
3D analysis with ABL flow at the inlet. Two CFD solvers ANSYS FLUENT and OpenFOAM were used in this study.
In future, the geometry and location of the wind-catcher has to be optimized to improve the thermal comfort inside
the room. There are concern on using temperature or heat flux as boundary condition on roof which will be explored
in future. Also, planning to extend this modelling and analysis for providing natural ventilations for buildings like
schools in Singapore.

5. Author’s contribution

Ijaz Fazil and Sivamoorthy contributed equally in this work. Ijaz Fazil concentrated on CFD analysis via ANSYS
FLUENT while Sivamoorthy developed codes for CFD analysis via OpenFOAM. Ferozkhan assisted the first two
authors in the calculation. In future, Ferozkhan’s contribution will be on optimization.

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