Volume 49

Study on the Influence of Non-Uniform Surface Temperature on the Wind-Thermal Environment of the Building Complex Zhengrong Li, Qianru Chen, Heyu Wang, Chenliang Ma

Abstract

The non-uniform distribution of building surface temperatures caused by building shading significantly affects the airflow structure within the building complex. However, previous numerical studies have mostly ignored the non-uniform distribution of building surface temperatures, instead using uniformly heated surfaces as an equivalent substitution. This approach compromises the accuracy of wind-thermal environment predictions within the building complex. Therefore, this study focused on a 4×4 dot-formed building complex and employed numerical simulation methods to explore the impact of the uniform surface assumption on the airflow structure within the complex. The airflow structure and the recirculation ratio rate were used as quantitative indicators in this analysis. The results indicated that the assumption of uniform surface introduced errors in predicting the risk of thermal accumulation within the building complex, and the errors increased with the increase of temperature difference. When the temperature difference was 10K, assuming a non-uniform surface as a uniform surface caused a change in the vortex structure of the airflow, leading to an error in predicting the airflow direction and overestimating the recirculation ratio by 23.74%. The research results emphasized the significance of considering the non-uniform surface temperatures caused by building shading for accurately predicting the wind-thermal environment of the building complex and further reducing energy consumption.

Keywords micro-climate, non-uniform surface temperature, the effect of building shading, wind-thermal coupling