Natural Ventilation References

The Breathing Buildings team contributes significantly to research into natural ventilation. Our links with the University of Cambridge research team at the BP Institute are very strong. See below for a reference list of background useful papers and articles.

1) Linden, P.F., Lane-Serff, G.F., Smeed, D.A. Emptying filling boxes: the fluid mechanics of natural ventilation. Journal Fluid Mechanics 1990; 212: 309-335

One of the seminal texts in natural ventilation – an excellent early paper in the field of natural ventilation. It focuses mainly on ventilation with point sources of heat. The most extreme example of this is a fire, and is therefore a valuable reference not only for general natural ventilation engineers but for fire and smoke engineers too.

2) Gladstone, C., Woods, A.W. On buoyancy-driven natural ventilation of a room with a heated floor. Journal Fluid Mechanics; 2001; 441: 293-314

This paper was one of the first to extend the principles of natural ventilation to cases of a distributed heat load at floor level. It tackles the fundamental challenge of ventilation but without the complexity of plumes which arise from point sources.

3) Linden, P.F. The fluid mechanics of natural ventilation. Annual Review Fluid Mechanics 1999; 31: 201-238

This is probably the most useful standalone academic paper ever written in the field of natural ventilation. It is a review paper and therefore covers a number of aspects of natural ventilation design challenges. If you have time just to read one paper as an introduction to natural ventilation, this is the one to have with you when you curl up on a sofa and inwardly digest!

4) Fitzgerald, S.D.; Woods, A.W. 2007 Transient natural ventilation of a room with a distributed heat source. J. Fluid Mech. J. Fluid Mech. 591, 21-42.

Up until 2007, much of the research in natural ventilation had involved steady state solutions. However, there are certain building types where transient changes in temperature, stratification etc. are not just interesting, but crucial when it comes to designing a natural ventilation strategy for a building. This paper tackles the case of a uniformly distributed heat load at floor level and investigates the temperature profiles which develop – there are some lovely photographs of laboratory analogue experiments which corroborate the theory.

5) Fitzgerald, S.D.; Woods, A.W. 2010 Transient natural ventilation of a space with localised heating. Building and Environment, 45(12), 2778-2789.

This paper follows on from the 2007 paper and tackles the case of a localised heat load at floor level and investigates the temperature profiles which develop – again there are some lovely photographs of laboratory analogue experiments which corroborate the theory.

6) Woods, A.W, Fitzgerald, S.; Livermore, S. 2009 A comparison of winter pre-heating requirements for natural displacement and natural mixing ventilation. Energy and Buildings. 41, 1306-1312.

This paper goes into detail about the potential energy savings which can be made by adopting mixing ventilation rather than displacement ventilation in winter – if you want to understand why the e-stack system has been developed, this is the paper to read!

7) Fitzgerald, S.D.; Woods, A.W. 2008 The influence of stacks on flow patterns and stratification associated with natural ventilation. Building and Environment, 43, 1719-1733.

Anyone who thinks that it is easy to design stack based natural ventilation with more than one stack or upper level vent needs to read this. At first glance, a room with a single stack, a lower window and an upper window may seem straightforward in terms of figuring out the various potential ventilation flow patterns. This paper describes just how complex it can be – even if there is unidirectional flow through each vent.

8) Whole Building Solution Ventilation Strategy Selection-A Toolkit, CIBSE Technical Symposium

9) Ventilation Approaches for Shopping Malls