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Airflow Analytical Toolkit (AAT): A MATLAB-based analyzer for holistic studies on the dynamic characteristics of airflows

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Abstract

The dynamic characteristics of different airflows on micro-scales have been explored from many perspectives since the late 1970s. On the one hand, most analytical tools and research subjects in previous contributions vary significantly: some only focus on fluctuant velocity features, while others pay attention to directional features. On the other hand, despite the wide variety of existing analytical methods, they are not systematically classified and organized. This paper aims to establish a system including state-of-the-art tools for airflow analysis and to further design a holistic toolkit named Airflow Analytical Toolkit (AAT). The AAT contains two tools, responsible for analyzing the velocity and direction characteristics of airflows, each of which is integrated with multiple analytical modules. To assess the performance of the developed toolkit, we further take typical natural and mechanical winds as cases to show its excellent analytical capability. With the help of this toolkit, the great differences in velocity and directional characteristics among different airflows are identified. The comparative results reveal that not only is the velocity of natural wind more fluctuating than that of mechanical wind, but its incoming flow direction is also more varying. The AAT, serving as a powerful and user-friendly instrument, will hopefully offer great convenience in data analysis and guidance for a deeper understanding of the dynamic characteristics of airflows, and further remedy the gap in airflow analytical tools.

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Data availability

The Instruction, Templates, and Resources of AAT can be downloaded at https://github.com/ZuoyuXie/Airflow-Analytical-Toolkit.

Abbreviations

AAT:

airflow analytical toolkit

AC:

air-conditioned

CFD:

computational fluid dynamics

Corr:

Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient

DF:

directional factor

DR:

draft risk

EMD:

empirical mode decomposition

FFT:

fast Fourier transform

GUI:

graphical user interface

LLE:

largest Lyapunov exponent

NV:

naturally-ventilated

PMV:

predicted mean vote

PSD:

power spectral density

PSR:

phase space reconstruction

RIW:

ratio of increasing wind variation

STA:

sampling-toolkit-analyses

WAFR:

wind azimuth fluctuation rate

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Acknowledgements

The study was supported by the China National Key R&D Program (No. 2022YFC3801500) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52078270 and No. 52130803).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Building Science, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Zuoyu Xie, Junhui Fan, Bin Cao & Yingxin Zhu

  2. Key Laboratory of Eco Planning & Green Building, Ministry of Education (Tsinghua University), Beijing, China

    Zuoyu Xie, Junhui Fan, Bin Cao & Yingxin Zhu

Authors
  1. Zuoyu Xie
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  2. Junhui Fan
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  3. Bin Cao
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  4. Yingxin Zhu
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Conceptualization: Zuoyu Xie, Bin Cao, Yingxin Zhu. Software design: Zuoyu Xie. Methodology: Zuoyu Xie, Junhui Fan. Formal analysis and investigation: Zuoyu Xie, Junhui Fan. Writing—original draft preparation: Zuoyu Xie, Junhui Fan. Writing—review and editing: Bin Cao, Yingxin Zhu. Funding acquisition: Bin Cao, Yingxin Zhu. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Bin Cao.

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The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article. Yingxin Zhu is an Editorial Board member of Building Simulation.

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Xie, Z., Fan, J., Cao, B. et al. Airflow Analytical Toolkit (AAT): A MATLAB-based analyzer for holistic studies on the dynamic characteristics of airflows. Build. Simul. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-024-1130-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-024-1130-9

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