How does a green building balance the need for natural ventilation and the wind pressure safety of high-rise buildings?
Publish Time: 2025-04-09
In modern green building design, natural ventilation is one of the core strategies to reduce energy consumption and improve indoor environmental quality. However, for high-rise buildings, strong wind pressure may not only destroy the ventilation effect, but also cause safety hazards, such as curtain wall cracks, indoor air flow turbulence and even structural vibration. How to ensure the wind pressure safety of high-rise buildings while meeting the ventilation needs of green buildings has become a complex issue that architects and engineers must face.
The wind pressure problem of high-rise buildings stems from the significant impact of their height and volume on airflow. As the height of the building increases, the wind speed and wind pressure increase exponentially, especially in coastal cities such as Shenzhen, where the wind load is more severe during typhoon weather. Traditional solutions often rely on closed design and mechanical ventilation, but this is contrary to the passive energy-saving concept advocated by green buildings. In recent years, through aerodynamic optimization, intelligent adjustment systems and material technology innovation, some projects have proved that natural ventilation and wind pressure safety can be taken into account.
The refined design of architectural form is the primary means to balance the two. Through wind tunnel tests and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, designers can optimize the shape of buildings and reduce the effect of wind pressure concentration. For example, Qianhai Times Square uses stepped terraces and curved shapes to effectively disperse wind force, while setting ventilation grooves on specific floors to guide airflow smoothly into the room. Similarly, Dubai's "Dynamic Tower" changes wind resistance through rotatable floors, but this type of technology is expensive. A more economical approach is to set wind deflectors or windproof fins on the building facade. For example, a super-high-rise residential project in Shenzhen uses horizontal decorative lines as a diversion function, so that the ventilation windows in the low-rise area can still be opened stably when the wind speed is 8m/s.
Adjustable enclosure structure is another key technology. Traditional fixed curtain walls are difficult to cope with variable wind pressure, while intelligent ventilation systems can dynamically respond to environmental changes. For example, the glass curtain wall of Pengcheng Laboratory is equipped with air pressure sensors and electric opening fans. When the wind speed exceeds the threshold, it automatically reduces the window area, which not only maintains the air exchange volume but also avoids strong wind inflow. The difficulty of this system lies in the accuracy of the control algorithm - excessive response will lead to insufficient ventilation, and slow response may cause safety hazards. In addition, double-layer curtain wall structures (such as the "breathing curtain wall" used in Shenzhen Ice and Snow World) use air buffer layers to mitigate wind pressure impact, and the inner layer can open the fan to achieve stable ventilation after buffering, but the construction cost and space occupation need to be weighed.
Material innovation is also crucial. Lightweight and high-strength materials such as aluminum corrugated composite panels can reduce the weight of the building and reduce the overall impact of wind loads on the structure, and its wind pressure resistance can be further improved through reinforcement and special node design. For example, the Zhuhai Aerospace Center project uses perforated aluminum panels combined with backing windproof nets on the facade, which allows air to penetrate while reducing 60% of wind pressure. In addition, the application of new aerogel insulation coatings on curtain wall glass not only reduces the dependence on ventilation and heat dissipation, but also enhances wind and earthquake resistance.
However, balancing natural ventilation and wind pressure safety still needs to face practical challenges. First, the operation and maintenance costs of dynamic systems are high, especially in areas with high humidity, and the durability of mechanical components may be limited. Secondly, some ventilation designs rely on user behavior (such as manual window opening), and intelligent management is needed to avoid human operational errors. More fundamentally, the green building evaluation system often pays more attention to energy consumption indicators, but lacks quantitative standards for wind pressure safety, resulting in conservative designs.
In the future, with the popularization of digital twin technology, buildings can rehearse ventilation and stress states under different wind speeds in a virtual environment to achieve a more refined balance. At the same time, bionic design (such as passive ventilation structures that imitate termite mounds) may provide new ideas for high-rise buildings. But in any case, the essence of this topic is still a dialogue between man and natural forces-under the premise of respecting the laws of the wind environment, using technological wisdom to achieve the ideal of green life.
