Simulation of wind-driven ventilative cooling systems for an apartment building in Beijing and Shanghai

This paper presents a performance evaluation of two passive cooling strategies, daytime ventilation and night cooling, for a generic, six-story suburban apartment building in Beijing and Shanghai. The investigation uses a coupled, transient simulation approach to model heat transfer and airflow in the apartments. Wind-driven ventilation is simulated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Occupant thermal comfort is accessed using Fanger’s comfort model. The results show that night cooling is superior to daytime ventilation. Night cooling may replace air-conditioning systems for a significant part of the cooling season in Beijing, but with a high condensation risk. For Shanghai, neither of the two passive cooling strategies can be considered successful.