Numerical analysis of outdoor thermal environment around buildings

Simulation of thermal environment around buildings is of great importance for residential microclimate study. In this article, a numerical method is proposed to simulate the outdoor thermal environment around buildings. By the method, temperature distributions of the outdoor air, building surfaces and ground surfaces are achieved by combining computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculation of air flow and energy balance equations calculation of surfaces. In every computing time step, the outdoor air distribution is calculated as quasi-steady condition. And the surface temperatures of buildings and ground are simplified as “shadow zone temperature” and “sunshine zone temperature” to reduce the calculating time and memory space. Response factor method is employed to deal with the transient heat transfer between outdoor air and surfaces of buildings and ground. The numerical method is validated by the measured data of outdoor thermal environment around one single building and the simulated temperature distributions are illustrated and analyzed at different time in a day.