Full Numerical simulation on the Wind Driven Natural Ventilation across Traditional Songqing Stadium Established Since 1936 in Wuhan University

Song-Qing Stadium is one of the traditional buildings, and it is still in operation for Wuhan University. However, its fluid mechanical characteristic of natural ventilation has not been yet raised with any concerns. Application potentials of natural ventilation across this traditional building should be discovered. In this paper, Songqing Stadium with multiple windows is considered to investigate the wind-driven ventilation flows using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The standard k-ε turbulence model is adopted to simulate the flow fields inside and outside the building after the procedure has been validated well by former wind tunnel experimental results. Several cases with different numbers of openings are subsequently simulated, and the effects of the location and number of openings on the stadium air movement have been investigated. Numerical results indicate that the wind pressure distributions around and inside the building are almost unchangeable in the several representative cases. The magnitude of velocity components inside and around the building are larger in cross ventilation than that in single-sided ventilation. In cross ventilation condition, the pressure coefficient on the front wall is the largest in cross ventilation with apertures opened on both sides. Pressure coefficients on the windward wall increase with numbers of lateral openings. The velocity component V outside the stadium is very weak such that it could be neglected, whereas it is relatively strong inside the stadium because the pressure in the building is not uniform across the lateral direction. When lateral openings exist, volume flow rate increases and the openings on the leeward wall could entrain ambient air though the windward apertures are opened. Nevertheless, the lateral openings do not cause the increase of the magnitude of V. The present work helps architectures and engineers to understand the characteristics of natural ventilation in the traditional public buildings, and it provides theoretical approach for developing zero-energy buildings in the future.