Use of simulation the design of a large naturally ventilated commercial office building

The  design  for  the  new Federal  Building  for  San Francisco includes an office tower that is to be naturally ventilated. The EnergyPlus thermal simulation program was used to evaluate different ventilation strategies for space cooling and rationalize the design of the facade. The strategies include ventilation driven by different combinations of wind, internal stack and external stack. The simulation results indicate that wind-driven ventilation can maintain adequate comfort even during hot periods. Computational fluid dynamics was used to study the airflow and temperature distribution in the occupied spaces arising from different combinations of window openings and outside conditions and thereby inform both  the  design  of  the  windows  and  the  control strategy.