A Compendious Investigation of Double Skin Façade Structural Element Impacts on Flow and Heat Transfer in Hot-Dry Climates

Abstract

The study evaluated the thermal and flow performance of naturally ventilated Double Skin Façades (DSFs). It has quantified newly defined design parameters titled “Fold Depth” impact in conjunction with the rest of the well-known design parameters categorized as cavity height, width, and opening sizes. Based on the simulations, the cavity temperature, velocity, mass flow rate, and extracted heat were more sensitive to the cavity height, and the inner and outer layer fold depth respectively. The highest range of variations of temperature and velocity are related to the cases with the highest elevation and cavity outer layer fold depth which are 5.9°C and 1.2 m/s. The cavity height variations showed a pronounced impact on the mass flow rate enhancement which is around 19% higher than Base Case. To ensure for providing enough ventilation rate, it must consider a determined range of variations for outer layer fold depth, in which the increase of the outer fold depth higher than 0.5 m would not improve removing heat from the cavity; the inner fold depth configurations can improve mass flow rate and extract heat up to 10% and 24% higher than the Base Case.

Keywords: Double-Skin Façade (DSF), Thermal performance, Fold, Ventilation, Mass flow rate