Impact of windcatcher on the thermal comfort and indoor air quality in a modern house

ABSTRACT

As the residential construction sector grows more quickly than other building sectors in Oman and other GCC nations, the proportion of total energy consumption in housing rises. The native inhabitants have implemented various strategies to enhance the thermal conditions in structures. The windcatcher was one of those methods used in hot climates when it was vital to achieve thermal comfort. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used in this research to find the best orientation of a windcatcher attached to a modern house in Muscat. In addition, thermal comfort and indoor air quality based on CO₂ concentration were also studied. This paper tries to fill the gap in research on using windcatchers with modern houses and find the best design for such windcatchers. Results indicate that placing a windcatcher with a rotation of 30° from the north towards the east will give better air velocity than a windcatcher with angles of 0°, 45°, and 60°. Furthermore, it was found that the windcatcher improved the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) by 34% and the Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfaction (PPD) by 48%. In addition, a modern house with a windcatcher reduced CO₂ concentration by more than 5% compared to a house without a windcatcher.

KEYWORDS:

• Building simulation
• CFD
• windcatcher
• thermal comfort
• indoor air quality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The research described here was funded under an internal grant program (IG/ENG/CAED/20/02) from Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. The authors gratefully acknowledge the continuous support of the university and the Department of Civil and Architecture Engineering.