New architectural concepts and features are designed to give green or sustainable buildings for having a better environment in the future. These new concepts and features, especially those with glass facades, might have difficulties in complying with the fire safety codes, especially in those countries with only prescriptive codes. Performance-based design has to be applied. However, engineering performance-based fire codes are still under development and even the performance-based concept has not yet been accepted in some cities such as Hong Kong. There is fire safety concern in buildings with natural ventilation provision driven by wind action. In this paper, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) will be applied to study natural ventilation in a small flat under wind action. Indoor air flow for a flat in a typical building will be simulated for windows at different locations. Mixing of heat due to a fire inside the building will be studied. The CFD tool selected is PHOENICS.

Volume Subject Area:
Heat Transfer
Topics:
Fire prevention, Green buildings, Ventilation, Computational fluid dynamics, Fire, Wind, Air flow, Design, Glass, Heat, Structures
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