Natural Ventilation of Buildings: Theory, Measurement and Design
About this book
Natural Ventilation of Buildings: Theory, Measurement and Design David Etheridge Wiley, 2012 Natural Ventilation of Buildings: Theory, Measurement and Design is the most rigorous and comprehensive treatment of its subject available in the English language. Published in 2012 by Wiley, it brings together the full spectrum of knowledge required to understand, measure, and design natural ventilation systems in buildings — from the first principles of fluid mechanics through to the practical procedures that architects and engineers use to determine ventilation rates, assess indoor air quality, and satisfy thermal comfort and regulatory requirements. Its author, David Etheridge, brings to the task a career uniquely poised between academic research and applied engineering practice, and the result is a book that speaks with authority to both communities.
The book begins and ends with design. An extended introductory chapter lays out an overview of natural ventilation design as both a conceptual framework and a practical challenge, immediately signalling that while theory is indispensable, the ultimate purpose of the book is to enable practitioners to make better-informed design decisions. This design orientation returns in the concluding chapters, where detailed design procedures are presented and the strengths and limitations of various analytical and computational methods are evaluated against the realities of engineering practice.
The theoretical core of the book is built on a meticulous treatment of the driving forces that produce natural airflow through buildings. Wind-driven ventilation arises from the pressure differences created across a building's envelope when wind impinges on its external surfaces; stack-driven or buoyancy-driven ventilation arises from the density differences between warm interior air and cooler exterior air. In practice, these two mechanisms operate simultaneously and interact in complex, often counterintuitive ways.
Etheridge devotes considerable space to both mechanisms independently and to their combination, developing the governing equations with mathematical rigour while consistently relating them to observable physical phenomena. A foundational chapter on fluid mechanics provides readers who lack a formal aeronautical or civil engineering background with the tools they need to follow the derivations that follow — covering continuity, the Bernoulli equation, pressure coefficients, and the turbulent boundary layer in an accessible but uncompromising way. One of the book's most valuable contributions is its treatment of mathematical models for ventilation.
Etheridge provides a systematic survey of the modelling landscape, from simple single-zone analytical expressions through multi-zone network models to full computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Each approach is evaluated not only for its theoretical basis but for its practical utility, accuracy, and the demands it places on input data. Network models, which represent a building's openings as non-linear flow resistances and solve the coupled wind and buoyancy pressure equations across a network of interconnected zones, are given particular attention: they are, in Etheridge's assessment, the workhorse of practical natural ventilation design for most building types, offering a workable balance between computational efficiency and physical realism.
CFD receives a full chapter of its own, with an honest discussion of both its power — the ability to resolve three-dimensional flow fields and near-building wind patterns in unprecedented detail — and its limitations, including sensitivity to turbulence model choice, boundary condition specification, and the substantial expertise required to obtain reliable results. Measurement forms the second major pillar of the book. Etheridge's background in experimental aerodynamics and ventilation research gives this section particular authority.
He covers the principal methods for measuring ventilation rates in real buildings — tracer gas techniques, pressurization tests, and anemometry — with detailed attention to the uncertainties and error sources inherent in each approach. The use of boundary layer wind tunnels to model natural ventilation in scale models is examined extensively, including the conditions that must be satisfied for dynamic similarity between model and prototype to hold. This material is of direct value to researchers designing measurement campaigns and to practitioners who need to interpret and critically evaluate ventilation performance data obtained during building commissioning or post-occupancy evaluation.
The book also addresses infiltration — the adventitious leakage of air through the building envelope through cracks, gaps around windows and doors, and other unintended openings — which in many existing buildings represents a significant and uncontrolled component of the overall ventilation rate. The relationship between envelope airtightness, infiltration, and deliberate natural ventilation is analyzed with care, and the implications for energy performance and indoor air quality are clearly drawn. Throughout the text, Etheridge is scrupulous about acknowledging uncertainty.
Ventilation design operates with imprecise inputs — wind statistics, building envelope characterization, occupant behaviour — and the book consistently encourages a probabilistic rather than deterministic mindset, asking designers to think not about a single design point but about the distribution of likely performance outcomes across the range of conditions a building will experience. Written for final-year undergraduates, postgraduate students, and practising engineers in building services engineering, building physics, and architectural technology, Natural Ventilation of Buildings is the reference that serious practitioners reach for when they need to move beyond rule-of-thumb guidance. It is rigorous without being inaccessible, and practical without sacrificing scientific integrity.
Source: Etheridge, D. (2012). Natural Ventilation of Buildings: Theory, Measurement and Design. Wiley.
ISBN 978-0-470-66035-5. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Natural+Ventilation+of+Buildings:+Theory,+Measurement+and+Design-p-9780470660355