Influence of Site Selection on Natural Ventilation in Chinese Traditional Folk House

The relationship between the site selection of a hilly terrain and the natural ventilation of the Dangdamen building complex, which is a traditional folk house, is revealed by a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. The wind press and speed distributions around the building in four cases with different weather conditions and topographies are simulated. The simulation results show that a hill can reduce the absolute values of the wind pressure at the windward and leeward sides of the building. The encouraging effect of the patio on the natural ventilation in a terrain with a hill is greater than that without a hill. The same situation occurs when comparing the patio effects between summer and winter. The wind speed around the building can be reduced by the hill as it is an obstacle and the degrees of the influence of the hill in summer and in winter are quite different because of different wind directions. The analysis results show that this kind of site selection, with the hill to the north, is a suitable way to settle the conflict of the natural ventilation requirements in summer and in winter under subtropical climate conditions, especially in houses with patios.