Cross ventilation analysis on the effect of setback distance of a terraced house using PIV

Urban development has become very alarming with the rise of population especially in regions with weak wind such as countries in the tropics like malaysia. the highly dense structures make it difficult to provide effective ventilation from heat,pollutions,dusts and even bacteria. with time,it will caused the urban area to become ‘sick’. due to this,building arrangement plays an important part in predicting airflow structure and the effectiveness of ventilation from the developed airflow. through this study,the effects of the setback distance arrangement,d,on the cross ventilation of two cascading terraced houses were analyzed. based on the flow structure,the possibility of the negative effects from the upstream house carried in to the downstream house was also observed. the study was conducted experimentally using particle image velocimetry (piv) with the aid of insight 4g for post-processing analysis. it was found that the most ideal setback distance was d = 0.5h even though a higher h/w threshold ratio of the street canyon allowed the transition of wake interference flow to isolated roughness flow. apart from that,the provided setback distance,d,can give sufficient ventilation on the downstream building. © 2015 penerbit utm press. all rights reserved.