Affiliations: Department of Mechanical Engineering, POSTECH, Pohang
790-784, Korea. | School of Environmental Science and Engineering,
POSTECH, Pohang 790-784, Korea.
Abstract: Air movement in workplaces, whether resulting from a forced
ventilation system or natural airflow, has a significant impact on occupational
health. In a huge building of shipbuilding factory, typical harmful factors
such as fume or vaporized gas from welding and cutting of steel plates give an
unpleasant feeling. From field data survey, the yearly dominant wind directions
around the factory building tested were north-west, north-east and south-east.
Among the three wind directions, the ventilation improvement was the worst for
the north-eastern wind. This study was focused on modification of opening vents
in order to utilize the natural ventilation flow effectively. Instantaneous
velocity fields inside the 1/1000 scale-down factory building model were
measured using a 2-frame cross-correlation PIV method. The factory model was
embedded in an atmospheric boundary layer simulated in a wind tunnel. The
modified vents improved the internal ventilation flow with increasing the flow
speed more than two times, compared with that of present vents.