International Journal on Architectural Science, Volume 2, Number 2, p.

35-45, 2001



35
A STUDY OF NATURAL VENTILATION OF PUBLIC HOUSING IN
SINGAPORE USING COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS (CFD)
SIMULATIONS

N.H. Wong and A. Loke
Department of Building, School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore, Singapore

(Received 22 March 2001; Accepted 19 June 2001)


ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to discuss the application of CFD for the study of natural ventilation of public housing
flats in Singapore. The flat types chosen for this study include the 3-room and 4-room flats. Two cases are
simulated based on these flat types, one having the internal doors closed and the other opened. The results show
that naturally ventilated flats are able to achieve reasonable ventilation performance especially when the internal
doors within the flats are opened for cross-ventilation. When the internal doors are closed, the ventilation
performance drops drastically especially in the bedrooms which are side-sided ventilated. The results have also
demonstrated that a reasonable degree of accuracy can be attained in the CFD simulations when the results
obtained are compared with the field measurements.


1. INTRODUCTION

Singapore is an island city-state where a multiracial
population of 3.9 million live and work on a land-
mass of less than 648 km
2
to create a nation that
enjoys one of the highest living standards in the
world. On an island that is devoid of natural
resources, the country has only one valuable
resource to tap on, its human resources. Singapore
is presently reviewing its land uses based on an
estimated population of five million.

In order to accommodate the rising demographic
population under the huge constraint of limited
land, the only option is to move upwards. With the
move in this vertical fashion, the issue of
ventilation comes into discussion. The ventilation
of a building can be either natural or artificial.
Natural ventilation, put simply is the air movement,
which is caused by pressure or temperature
differences across building apertures. Mechanical
ventilation, on the other hand is the energy-driven
alternatives to natural ventilation, it uses fans and
ducts to supply and extract air in localized areas.
Air conditioning, another form of mechanical
ventilation treats and supplies air. This method is
particularly useful to cool air below ambient
temperatures. The decision that designers make in
regard to the natural ventilation is often one made
with little information since natural ventilation is
an area where many uncertainties exist.

At present, the government is also studying the
viability of having a central air-conditioning unit
for the public residential dwellings. Somehow,
recent development in mechanical ventilation have
encouraged researchers to focus more on the use of
mechanical ventilation as the solution for thermal
comfort and health. However, the problem with
mechanical ventilation is that it is energy intensive.
Singapore, being an island endowed with no
natural resources has to get supply from overseas
markets. On the other hand, the use of natural
ventilation as a solution for ventilation requires no
such resources and is a much cheaper alternative.

CFD simulation has been used very extensively for
the studies of velocity and temperature distribution
in an enclosure that is mechanically ventilated [1-6].
However, the use of CFD for the studies of natural
ventilation is still limited [7-9]. This is partially due
to the dynamic fluctuation of the wind speeds and
directions. Furthermore, these parameters are also
governed by many other factors such as the
surrounding obstructions, terrain factors,
geometrical configuration of the building etc [10].
This study therefore attempts to explore the
potential of using CFD for the study of natural
ventilation in public housing in Singapore. The
study will involve two different flat types, i.e. 3-
room and 4-room flats. In order to validate the
CFD simulation results, site measurements are also
conducted. The CFD software employed for the
purpose of this study is Phoenics [11].


2. METHODOLOGY

2.1 Buildings and Sites Selection
Two different flat types were used in this study: 3-
room and 4-room flat types that serve as the classic
examples of residential high-rise HDB buildings in
Singapore. The site plans of the 3-room and 4-
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36
room blocks are shown in Figs. 1 and 2. The 3-
room flat block of 15 storeys high is surrounded by
a number of high-rise blocks of equal height on the
south-west, with a low-rise school located to its
north-east. For the 4-room flat block, it is
surrounded by a number of high-rise blocks on
three sides except the eastern part, which is
unobstructed.

Fig. 1: Site plan of the 3-room flat block


Fig. 2: Site plan of the 4-room flat block


2.2 Field Studies
DANTEC multi-channel flow analyzer type 54N10
(see Fig. 3) with 12 hot wire anemometers were
used to measure the wind velocities within each
room of the investigated units as well as the
outdoor wind condition. The transducers were
omni-directional hot wire anemometers (Fig. 4) and
their automatic logging meet the ASNI/ASHRAE
55-1992 [12] and ISO 7726 [13] specifications for
accuracy and response time. The range of
measurement of the hot wire anemometers used
was 0.1 to 5 ms
-1
with accuracy of 5 %. Sampling
of the wind speed is taken at half an hour interval
with an integration time of 180 seconds and the
monitored results are then printed out every half
hourly. In this case, 3-minute average wind speed
data at half hourly intervals was obtained. The
anemometers were also placed on the outside of the
windows that are used for the establishment of the
boundary conditions of the inlets in the CFD
modeling. Another hot wire anemometer was also
placed at the rooftop to track the wind speeds and
directions that were assumed to be unobstructed.


Fig. 3: DANTEC multi-channel flow analyzer


Fig. 4: Omni-directional hot-wire anemometer

The plan of each dwelling unit and the positioning
of the indoor sensors are shown in Figs. 5 and 6,
with measuring points placed near the windows and
at the center of each room. The measurements
were taken at a height of 1.5 m above the floor
level, which is almost half the height of the ceiling
of the room and represents the approximate height
N
N
Housing blocks Location of site measurement
Housing blocks
Location of site measurement
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37
of occupants at standing level. The windows of
each unit investigated are widely opened to
investigate the effect of cross ventilation.
Measurements were done for two conditions:
internal door fully opened to determine the effect
of cross ventilation; and internal door fully closed.
The measurements were carried out over two days
from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. The characteristics of the
investigated units and the measuring periods are
summarized in Table 1.

Table 1: Data for investigated dwellings
Flat type Housing estate Measuring period
Floor of the
building
Measuring time
3-room ST Georges Lane June 22
nd
23
rd
7
th
9 a.m. 10 p.m.
4-room Ang Mo Kio June 2
nd
3
rd
11
th
48 hrs for 2 days







Fig. 5: Plan of 3-room flat and locations of indoor sensors
12.45m

2 1 4
5
3
7
9
8
6
6 m
N
W2
W3 W4
W1
Door-BAT1
Door-BAT
Door-MB
Door-BR1
Door-SR
N
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38









2.3 CFD Simulations
2.3.1 Grid Structure and Boundary Conditions
A simulation domain size of 6.00 m in the X-
direction, 12.45 m in the Z-direction and 2.45 m in
the Y-direction was used for the modeling of the 3-
room flat. For the 4-room flat, the simulation
domain size of 9 m along the X-axis, 12.95 m
along the Z-axis and 2.45 m along the Y-axis was
adopted. The grid structures used in the four
simulations are shown in Table 2. All floors and
walls are defined as BLOCKAGE and made of
concrete block with medium weight and adiabatic
in nature. All inlets and outlets are defined as
OPENING. The degree of opening of the internal
doors as well as the crack width at the top and
bottom of the doors were measured on site and
modeled accordingly. Since measurement of the
temperatures in the vertical profile shows that the
difference is very minimal, the buoyancy effect is
ignored. Table 3 shows the boundary conditions
used in the four cases.

2.3.2 Assumptions
3-Dimensional steady state flow.

7 1
2
8
4
3
5
6
10
9
12.95 m
4.5 m
N
W2 W3
W4 W5
Door-BAT1
Door-BAT
Door-MB
Door-BR2
Door-BR3
Fig. 6: Plan of 4-room flat and locations of indoor sensors
W1
N
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39
Table 2: Grid distribution for the simulations
Grid distribution
Cases
X-direction Y-direction Z-direction
C1 30 12 65
C2 30 12 65
C3 45 12 65
C4 45 12 65


Table 3: Boundary conditions for the 3-room and 4-room flat
Cases Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4
Inlet velocity (ms
-1
)
W2 (Z-direction)
W5 (Z-direction)
-0.542 -1.312
1.684

0.223
W1 (Z-direction)
W4 (Z-direction)
-1.040 -0.864
0.618

0.067
Angle of openings of internal
doors (degree)

Door-MB 0 290 0 290
Door-BR2 0 0 290
Door-BR1
Door-BR3
0 110
0

110
Door-BAT 0 290 0 290
Door-BAT1 0 290 0 290
Door-SR 0 290 0 110
Crack Width when internal
doors are closed (mm)
12 12



All structural elements like floors, walls etc
are assumed to be adiabatic in nature.
The effects of gravity were disregarded in
order to achieve a more speedy convergence
since such forces would have minimum
impact on the simulations.
k-e turbulence model.
Other than the inlets and outlets, all other
external leakage paths are ignored.
The global convergence criterion is taken as
0.001%.


3. DATA ANALYSIS

3.1 Overview
The analysis will be covered in 3 aspects:

Analysis of the individual cases
Comparison between the two cases

Comparison between simulation results and
site measurements.

Since the results obtained from the CFD
simulations are in terms of absolute air velocities,
this would render the comparisons between
different cases difficult as the boundary conditions
used in each case are different. A common
approach is to use the concept of velocity
coefficient (C
v
) by normalizing the velocity at each
point with a reference velocity. The formula is
shown below:

C
v
= V
1
/V
2


where V
1
is the velocity at the point of interest, and
V
2
is the reference velocity.

In this case, the reference velocity is obtained from
site measurement at the rooftop, in which the
average 3-minute wind speed data was recorded
concurrently with that obtained for the indoor
points.


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40

3.2 3-Room Cases
Fig. 7 and Table 4 show the velocity distribution
and C
v
of the 3-room flat with the internal doors
closed (Case 1). It can be seen that cross
ventilation occurs effectively between the Living
Room and Kitchen since their windows are directly
facing each other. This has contributed to the high
C
v
of 0.9 for both the Living Room and Kitchen.
For the Master Bedroom, even though the window
is facing the prevailing wind, the airflow within the
room is minimal. This has contributed to a low C
v

of 0.2. The closing of the internal doors has
prevented cross ventilation from taking place.
Bedroom 1 has the lowest C
v
of 0.1. Being situated
in the leeward side of prevailing wind and the door
being closed, there is adequate reason for the dire
state that this room is experiencing. The only
airflow experienced in this room is due to the
infiltration through the internal door of the
bedroom.

Fig. 8 and Table 4 show the velocity profile and C
v

of the 3-room flat with the internal doors opened
(Case 2). For the Living Room and Kitchen, cross
ventilation is further enhanced with the opening of
internal doors resulting in the high C
v
of 1.0 and
1.5 respectively. The higher C
v
of Kitchen indicates
that some of the airflow from the Kitchen are being
diverted to Bedroom 1. With the opening of the
internal door of Master Bedroom, the C
v
has
increased to 0.5. However, the C
v
is the lowest
among the rooms. For Bedroom 1, there is a
drastic improvement of C
v
from 0.1 to 1.4 when the
internal door is opened. The velocity profile shows
that air from both Kitchen and Master Bedroom is
channeled into Bedroom 1.

A close examination of the two cases in Table 4
shows that Case 2 performed much better than
Case 1 in terms of C
v
values. The C
v
values of all
the rooms show an increase, with the greatest
increase in Bedroom 1 of almost 93%. In the
Living Room, the increase in C
v
is little, from 0.9
to 1.0 (10% improvement). Case 2 shows a 40%
increase in the C
v
value for the Kitchen. In the
Master Bedroom, the room enjoys better ventilation
when the internal door is opened, evidenced by the
60% rise in the C
v
. However, even with the
opening of the internal door, the ventilation
condition in Master Bedroom is still fared badly
with respect to the other rooms. This could be
explained by the orientation of the window opening
in relation to the door opening. It is apparent that
when the internal door is opened, the room is able
to have more significant airflow. However, the
effect of cross-ventilation does not have much of
an impact, given the fact that the fresh air coming
from the inlet does not cover some areas of the
room before leaving the room through the door
opening. With regard to Bedroom 1, this room
definitely benefits from the opening of the internal
door. Having a 93% rise in C
v
value is clear
instance of how cross-ventilation is helping to
improve the ventilation condition of this room.
The vectors diagram (Fig. 8) shows that the
bedroom not only enjoys the airflow coming from
the Master Bedroom, but also from the Living
Room due to the proximity of the door opening to
the path of the main airflow from the Kitchen.
Under such favorable condition, there is no doubt
that this room is well ventilated.

3.3 4-Room Cases
Fig. 9 and Table 5 show the velocity distribution
and C
v
of the 4-room flat with the internal doors
closed (Case 3). For the Living Room, the vector
diagram shows that the main path of airflow is
from the Living Rooms window to the Kitchens
window. Since the two windows are not directly
opposite each other, there is a turning of the air
currents at the side of the Master Bedroom. This
has resulted in the reduction of the effectiveness of
the cross ventilation with the Living Room having
a low C
v
of 0.5. The Kitchen, on the other hand, is
better ventilated having a higher C
v
of 0.9. The
Master Bedroom has a C
v
of only 0.05 indicating
that there is barely any airflow inside the room.
This can be explained by the fact that the bedroom
door is orientated towards the Storeroom instead of
the Living Room. Thus, the room is not able to
experience the infiltration from the Living Room.
For Bedroom 2, this room is again under-ventilated
having a low C
v
of only 0.1. However, it is better
ventilated than the Master Bedroom since
infiltration can occur from both the Living Room
and Bedroom 3 due to the orientation of the
bedroom door. The ventilation in Bedroom 3 is
reasonable, considering that it shares the same C
v

of 0.5 for the Living Room.

Table 4: Comparison of C
v
in 3-room flat with internal doors opened and closed
Room types
Case 1
C
v

Case 2
C
v

% Improvement
[(Case 2 Case 1)/Case 1] x 100%
Living Room 0.90 1.00 10%
Kitchen 0.90 1.50 40%
Master Bedroom 0.20 0.50 60%
Bedroom 1 0.10 1.40 93%
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41
Average 0.53 1.10 52%


Fig. 7: Velocity distribution in 3-room flat with internal doors closed (Case 1)




Fig. 8: Velocity distribution of the 3-room flat with internal doors opened (Case 2)
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42
Fig. 10 and Table 5 show the velocity profile and
C
v
of the 4-room flat with the internal doors opened
(Case 4). For the Living Room, it is surprised to
see that the opening of the internal doors has
resulted in a slight reduction of C
v
from 0.5 to 0.4.
A close examination of the velocity profile reveals
that the opening of the internal doors has minimal
effect on the cross ventilation that occurs between
the Living Room and Kitchen. As for the Kitchen,
the C
v
has reduced from 0.9 to 0.4. The Master
Bedroom is the worst ventilated, having the lowest
C
v
of 0.1. The obvious reason is again due to the
location of the door that does not allow much air to
enter the room. Instead, the projecting edge of the
Master Bedroom deflects the air away to the
direction of the Storeroom. The airflow in the
room is induced in this case by the suction effect of
the airflow passing through the door of the
bedroom. The ventilation in Bedroom 2 is slightly
better than the Master Bedroom having a C
v
of 0.2.
The velocity vectors in this room indicate that the
airflow comes mainly from Bedroom 3 with some
airflow channeled from the Living Room. For
Bedroom 3, being situated opposite Bedroom 2,
this room has a higher C
v
of 0.3. This can be due
to the fact that the windows here are windward and
that the door of the Bedroom is facing that of
Bedroom 2. This allows cross ventilation to occur
effectively.

A close examination of the two cases as shown in
Table 5 shows that by opening the internal doors,
C
v
values especially in the Living Room, Kitchen
and Bedroom 3 have reduced. On the other hand,
there is improvement for both Master Bedroom and
Bedroom 2. The Kitchen shows the largest
reduction in C
v
of 125%, followed by Bedroom 3
of 67% and Living Room of 25%. Both Master
Bedroom and Bedroom 2 show improvement of
50%.

Table 5: Comparison of C
v
in 4-room flat with internal doors opened and closed
Room types
Case 3
C
v

Case 4
C
v

% Improvement
[(Case 2 Case 1)/Case 1] x 100%
Living Room 0.50 0.40 -25%
Kitchen 0.90 0.40 -125%
Master Bedroom 0.05 0.10 50%
Bedroom 2 0.10 0.20 50%
Bedroom 3 0.50 0.30 -67%
Average 0.41 0.28 - 46%



Fig. 9: Velocity distribution of the 4-room flat with internal doors closed (Case 3)
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43
fluctuated quite significantly in these areas. This
has added to the uncertainty in the comparison.


Fig. 10: Velocity distribution of the 4-room flat with internal doors opened (Case 4)


3.4 Comparative Analysis between the 3-
Room Cases and the 4-Room Cases
Comparing the C
v
values for 3-room and 4-room
flats (Tables 4 and 5) under the close door
condition, it can be seen that 3-room flat has better
ventilation in most locations than the 4-room flat.
For the Kitchen and Living Room of the 3-room
flat, the vertical alignment of the windows of
Kitchen and Living Room enhances cross
ventilation resulting in high C
v
of 0.9 in both
locations. However, this is not the case for the 4-
room flat. This accounts for the low C
v
of 0.5 for
the Living Room in 4-room flat. The Master
Bedroom of 3-room flat also shows higher C
v
than
that of the 4-room flat. This is due to the
orientation of the door that faces Bedroom 1 and
Living Room, thus promoting infiltration/
exfiltration to occur from/to both Living Room and
Bedroom 1. However, in the case of 4-room flat,
the door of the Master Bedroom is orientated
towards the Store. As a result, it is unable to
capture effectively the airflow from the Living
Room. On the other hand, comparing Bedroom 1
of 3-room flat with Bedroom 3 of 4-room flat,
Bedroom 3 shows a higher C
v
of 0.5 as compared
to 0.1 in Bedroom 1. Comparing the C
v
values
under the open door condition, it is obvious that the
3-room flat performs much better than the 4-room
flat in all locations. By comparing the velocity
profile between the two cases (Figs. 8 and 10), it
can be seen that for 3-room flat, the opening of the
door of Bedroom 1 has enhanced the cross
ventilation between the Living Room, Kitchen as
well as Bedroom 1. However, in the case of 4-
room flat, this is not the case by opening the door
of the Master Bedroom. The cross ventilation
between Kitchen and Living Room is not enhanced.
In this case, suction effect due to the airflow
parallel to the door causes minor wind effect in the
Master Bedroom.

3.5 Comparison of CFD Simulations with
Field Measurements
Figs. 11 and 12 show the comparison of the
velocities at various locations between CFD
simulations and field measurements for both 3-
room and 4-room flats. The results show that in
general, CFD simulations produce lower velocities
than site measurements. For 3-room flat, the main
deviations occur in points 4 and 5, which are
located in Bedroom 1. For all the other points, the
simulation results are comparable to that of the
field measurements. With respect to the 4-room
flat, the velocities obtained from CFD simulations
are much closer to that obtained from field
measurements except for point 5. The results show
that the discrepancy tends to occur at the window
locations at the leeward side of the flats. During the
measurement, it was observed that the wind speed
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44

Fig. 11: Comparison of velocity between CFD simulations and site measurements for 3-room flat

Fig. 12: Comparison of velocity between CFD simulations and site measurements for 4-room flat


1. CONCLUSION

The aim of this study is to provide an insight into
the application of CFD techniques in the modelling
of 3-room and 4-room public housing flats. Two
cases are simulated for each flat type, in order to
compare the difference in the overall ventilation
performance of the unit, given that the internal
doors are opened or closed. The results show that
the CFD techniques could provide the designers
very useful information in terms of the impact of
flat layout on the velocity distribution so that
optimum designs can be achieved to reap the full
potential of the natural ventilation. The case
studies on the two flat types demonstrated that the
3-room flat is better ventilated than the 4-room flat
in both situations when the internal doors are
opened and closed. The simulation results also
show that when the bedroom doors are closed, the
ventilation performance of bedrooms is drastically
affected in most cases. This is primarily due to the
fact that the rooms become single-sided ventilated.
The studies also show that by strategically
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
1.4
1.6
1.8
2
2.2
2.4
2.6
2.8
3
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Location
W
i
n
d

V
e
l
o
c
i
t
y

(
m
/
s
)
CFD-Case 1 Site Measurements - Case 1 CFD-Case 2 Site Measurements - Case 2
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Location
V
e
l
o
c
i
t
y

(
m
/
s
)
CFD-Case 3 Site Measurements-Case 3 CFD-Case 4 Site measurements-Case 4
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45
orientating the bedroom door to face the direction
where cross ventilation could occur, it can improve
the airflow inside the room through better
infiltration/ exfiltration. The finding has
demonstrated that CFD techniques have the
potential to predict airflow to a reasonable degree
of accuracy. However, the accuracy achieved was
attainable only with a certain level of
familiarization of the CFD program employed and
elementary knowledge of fluids dynamics
principles. Judgment on the part of the user is
required both in the CFD modelling process and in
the interpretation of the CFD results. In the CFD
modelling process, users need to establish the
correct boundary conditions such as the wind
direction and magnitude. This could prove to be
difficult at times and such error made in the CFD
simulations will manifest in the CFD results.


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