Ventilation performance of solar chimney integrated into a multi-storey building

Previous studies have mainly focused on solar chimneys in single-chamber/zone or single-story buildings. Its theoretical development in multi-chamber or multi-story buildings is lagging, which hampers its practical applications in multi-storey buildings. This study investigated ventilation capacity characterized by volume flow rates numerically and theoretically for a multi-storey building with a solar chimney. Three mathematical methods based on simplified models were introduced to predict the ventilation rates for each floor. By comparing the three methods, Method 1, based on the bifurcation hypothesis, was found suitable for two-storey or single-storey cases; and Method 3, based on empirical flow equations, is practical for those cases greater than two-storey. To optimize the ventilation rate, a wider cavity gap and a higher stack height for a multi-storey solar chimney were the most effective ways compared to the single-zone/floor cases. A larger window area and air inlet size promoted the ventilation capacity, where the growth rate of volume flow was small and critical values exist. It was observed that the solar chimney dimensions show a more significant effect on the volume flow rates than the solar radiation intensity. The main contribution of this study is that it establishes the links between the single-zone and the multi-storey theoretical models and proposed practical mathematical methods to obtain acceptable prediction accuracy of ventilation rates for a solar chimney in a multi-storey building.