Sustainable Ventilation

Buildings are generally not thought of as a site of large energy consumption, but research shows that a significant amount of global energy consumption is spent in heating and cooling of the spaces where we live or work. With climate change and increasing attention to the spread of pandemics and air quality, how to ventilate spaces adequately and at low energy cost is becoming an increasingly relevant problem.

I started research on this problem by thinking through how “vernacular” architectural elements work, in particular, how thermal convection and phase changes drive ventilation in traditional Persian windcatchers or Mediterranean patios. However, these problems are very situation-specific. Research soon moved in the direction of assessing models for indoor ventilation and trying to relate general HVAC pressure and heating needs to what is happening inside a room to assess whether these traditional elements can still meet modern needs. For example, our recent work on direct numerical simulations of single-room ventilation assessed the effect of heating via a single or two sources on how the air in a room stratifies.