Natural ventilation in office buildings in the city center: determination of wind pressure coefficients through wind tunnel experiments

• Grant number: 16/12170-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2017
• End date: October 17, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Architecture and Town Planning - Architecture and Urbanism Technology
• Principal Investigator: Leticia de Oliveira Neves
• Grantee: Elidi Ivy Horita Paolini
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Engenharia Civil, Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FEC). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The atmospheric boundary layer wind tunnel is an important instrument to evaluate the effects of natural ventilation in the building design, since it allows performing qualitative and quantitative analyses of parameters that directly affect the airflow on a building, such as speed and pressure, by the use of small-scale models. The Laboratory of Environmental Comfort of the School of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Urban Design of UNICAMP has a wind tunnel equipped with all the necessary instruments for conducting natural ventilation experiments. Accordingly, the main objective of this research is to calibrate the atmospheric boundary layer profiles of the wind tunnel and to generate wind pressure coefficients to be used as input data for the energy performance analysis of an office building located in an urban center. In this regard, three sessions of tests will be conducted: the first one of velocity, aiming to characterize and calibrate the wind tunnel boundary layer profiles; the second one of surface pressure, through the use of a test model, to generate wind pressure coefficients and to compare it to data from the literature; the third one is also of surface pressure, to obtain wind pressure coefficients of an office building model, to be used in the energy performance analysis of a correlated research. As an evaluation criterion for the experiments results, parameters taken from standards and bibliographic references will be used for comparison purposes. Therefore, obtained results will be useful to check the ideal boundary layer profiles for the wind tunnel and the specificities of wind tunnel experiments as a method to calculate wind pressure coefficients using small-scale models. (AU)