Cooling performance of persian wind towers

Abstract

In hot-dry regions of Iran typical buildings are made of mud and fired brick. Temperature, humidity and airflow control comfort within such buildings. These passive cooling buildings use nature's elements in providing comfort to people: night ventilation, evaporative cooling and ground cooling. High-rise wind towers (badgirs) above the roofs catch the passing winds and channel them down to the ground and basement spaces in order to cool the internal spaces on summer days. In this paper Persian wind towers and their passive cooling system are described. Results from numerical analysis of wind towers with four different heights are presented. Parameters such as mass flow and temperature in wind towers are studied and the effects of their heights and the orientation and velocity of wind on these parameters are reported. © 2012 WIT Press.