Improvement of natural ventilation in a large factory building using a louver ventilator

Abstract

When heat generated from facilities inside a large factory building is not discharged outside the building due to a stagnant ventilation flow, the working environment of workers becomes worse, and the cooling of high-temperature products is delayed. In this study, wind tunnel tests were conducted to investigate the natural ventilation of entrained air inside a large factory building. The scale-down factory-building models were embedded in a simulated atmospheric boundary layer (ABL), and the mean and fluctuating velocity fields were measured using a two-frame particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique. For the original factory model, some of the outdoor air came in the factory building through the one-third open windward wall, while the stagnant flow region existed in the rear part of the target area. In order to improve the indoor ventilation environment of the present factory building, three different types of the louver ventilator were attached at the upper one-third open windward wall of the factory model. Among the three louver ventilators tested in this study, the ventilator model #3 with the outer louver (theta(o) = 90 degrees) and the inner louver (theta(i) = -70 degrees) was found to improve the natural ventilation inside the target factory-building model. It increased the flow rate of the entrained air by aligning the outer louver blades with the oncoming wind and guiding the entrained air down to the ground surface with the elongated inner louver blades. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.