by David Featherston 

Green buildings are designed to utilise natural convective air currents to circulate air and heat throughout the entire building.  As a consequence, individual office air conditioning (HVAC) must be examined as part of the whole building ventilation as opposed to conventional commercial office spaces which are self contained.  The green building, shown below, consisted of four floors of offices each overlooking a central atrium with variable roof louvers to control ventilation.  The environmental conditions of a third floor office were examined during typical summer and winter conditions by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods.

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