Assessment for the age-of-the-air and ventilation efficiency in confined outdoor spaces through computational fluid dynamics techniques

Abstract

An experimentally validated numerical method for evaluating the suitability of an urban design with regard to its capacity to provide the optimum air quality for its occupants through the confined outdoor spaces is proposed. Eight possible confined outdoor spaces are defined according to their position with regard to the built elements, laterally delimited by the envelope surfaces of the neighbouring buildings. This work focuses on the definition of a procedure capable of analysing outdoor air change quality according to the age-of-the-air concept. The obtained results show that the confined outdoor spaces that are exposed to the wind action are more predisposed to reduce the mean age-of-the-air that they contain. For the analysed cases, a considerable improvement of up to 78.68% in the air change quality can be obtained by taking into account wind exposure criteria in relation to its shape and urban density, which is classified for this purpose.