An approach to provide passive cooling with natural ventilation design in mosque buildings

Typically, energy consumption in a naturally ventilated building is 40% less than in a mechanically ventilated building. The largest portion of the energy consumed by mosque buildings throughout the year comes from cooling energy, which is consumed in the summer months. Therefore, it is very important to reduce the energy consumed in mosques during the summer months. The floor height of mosque buildings is generally designed as 5-6 times higher than human beings. This height allows to design various options for natural ventilation. However, today, mosque buildings in Türkiye windows are designed as fixed windows with aesthetic concerns and the potential for natural ventilation is ignored. In order to solve this problem in mosques at the design stage, the study aims to evaluate the natural ventilation potential in mosques and establish design criteria for architects. For the study, simulations were created using computational fluid dynamics analysis. In this context, six different window opening scenarios were modeled in the ANSYS Fluent program and the effect of natural ventilation on interior temperatures was tested on a mosque prototype designed for the study. The scope of study is limited to include interior flow rates and interior temperatures only. Interior flow maps and temperature maps were evaluated comparatively for each scenario. According to the results of the study, it has been seen that stack ventilation in mosque buildings is quite efficient. In this context, designing operable windows at the upper elevations of mosque buildings or designing more than one opening on the roof has yielded much more positive results in terms of passive cooling than the current common practice in mosque buildings. As a result, design criteria that architects can use during the design phase have been suggested.