| Title |
Possibility of Improving Comfortable Ventilation in Single-Occupancy Modular Units |
| Authors |
정창헌(Cheong, Chang-Heon) ; 이정훈(Lee, Jeong Hoon) |
| DOI |
https://doi.org/10.5659/JAIK.2025.41.7.325 |
| Keywords |
Modular Housing; Ventilation; Computational Fluid Dynamics; OpenFoam |
| Abstract |
In this study, the possibility of improving comfort ventilation of single-room modular homes for free cooling was examined by using
CFD(Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulation. A modular house with existing residential units connected in parallel and an improved model
with additional operable window for cross ventilation was selected for comparative evaluation. Conventional single rooms have only one
operable window at the front, allowing restricted natural ventilation performance. Even though fan-assisted natural ventilation using a
bathroom exhaust fan was performed, the indoor airflow speed was found to be very low. At this time, the indoor airflow speed can
partially contribute to discharging excessive heat of indoors during intermediate seasons, but it is difficult to improve the thermal comfort of
residents during the hot summer season. As a result, it was confirmed that the average indoor airflow speed improved from 0.0375 m/s (Case
4) under the condition of operating only the exhaust fan to 0.456 m/s (Case 5) when cross ventilation was implemented.. Consequently, the
PMV (Predicted Mean Vote) of occupants could be lowered from 1.2 to 0.39. In this study, it was found out that it is practically difficult to
provide comfortable ventilation in a modular single-person residential unit with only one window on the front, and that comfortable
ventilation performance can be significantly improved by changing the unit layout and adding operable windows. |