Natural ventilation performance of a double-skin facade with a solar chimney

Double-skin facade is getting more and more attention as it provides many possibilities for energy conservation and at the same time creates good indoor environment. In this paper, natural ventilation performance of a double-skin facade is highlighted. A prototype building is proposed, which is thought to be an eight-storey office building with an atrium space in the north side. The south facade of the building is a double-skin facade and a thermal storage space called solar chimney is considered above the double-skin space. Actually, the double-skin space is connected with the chimney channel. Reduced scale model experiments and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis are carried out in this research to evaluate the natural ventilation performance of the prototype building. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.