Computer simulation on natural ventilation design of a warehouse

Abstract

A typical warehouse has metal cladding-steel frame structure and overheating can easily occur due to solar radiation and stratified space especially in region with hot and humid climate such as Malaysia, The studied warehouse is located in Johor Bahru and can be regarded as a typical warehouse. Temperature measurements had been made on a windless afternoon and the indoor has an average of 32°C. Diesel powered forklift was operating and mechanical ventilation system is absent to exhaust the pollutants out of the warehouse. Thermal Comfort and minimum airflow rate may not be fulfilled as stated by ASHRAE. This thesis is aim to study the effect of natural ventilation on the warehouse via computer simulation. The software used is ANSYS FLUENT. From the simulated results, it has shown that when wind is absent, the stack effect natural ventilation took place in the warehouse. However, stack effect is ineffective to remove heat from the compound. While cross ventilation takes place when there is presence of wind. Cross ventilation had greatly improve the condition but still unable to fulfil requirements stated by ASHRAE. Three more natural ventilation strategy are then integrated into the existing warehouse, namely: increasing window-to-wall ratio (WWR) close to 0.24, lengthen the roof ridge and installing the turbine ventilators and the former case shows greatest improvement in airflow.