BPS5234A Chap.12 Industry CFD Projects and Green Building Practice
Industry CFD Projects and Green Building Practice
From benchmark to real building
The group project moves from idealised shapes to real buildings. Teams of three, one possibly of four, choose one of fourteen industry CFD working examples from the first supplementary reading and apply it to a realistic building, using drawings or geometry from sources such as OpenStreetMap with Blender, Rhino, AutoCAD or SketchUp.
Teams are formed to mix academic backgrounds, cultures, design and engineering emphasis, and part-time and full-time study.
The range of industry problems
The examples span indoor air and comfort, such as hybrid ventilation with fans and louvres, thermal comfort and indoor air quality, hospital ventilation under normal, haze and pandemic conditions, and hot-air evacuation from an aircraft cabin;
urban and outdoor problems such as urban heat island mitigation, tree drag, shading and evapotranspiration, sustainable town design, large outdoor air treatment systems and wind-driven rain on mixed-mode ventilation; hazard and safety problems such as pollutant dispersion with risk assessment, chlorine gas, fire and hydrogen;
and condenser heat rejection in a high-rise air well.
Tools and certification
The course teaches ANSYS Fluent, introduces OpenFOAM, and adds ODYSSEE, an AI-enabled surrogate modelling tool for parametric study and optimisation.
The course description aligns the subject with Singapore’s Green Mark CFD criteria, and the rain lecture notes that particle tracking is compliant with the Green Mark code for wind-driven rain.
The deliverables
A twenty-minute presentation and a report with six sections, running from the problem and its objectives, through method and scope, to deliverables and impact on practice, each worth half of the project mark.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The fourteen industry working examples by family
- 02
Team formation and real building geometry
- 03
Modelling fans and louvres for hybrid ventilation
- 04
Surrogate modelling for parametric design studies
- 05
The Green Mark context for building CFD
- 06
The six report sections and the presentation
Worked example · free
Sizing a parametric study for a surrogate model
- 1Count the combinations in a full factorial design.
- 2Convert the count into simulation hours.
- 2Explain the role of the surrogate model and its check.
Key terms
- Hybrid Ventilation
- Natural ventilation assisted by mechanical elements such as fans and louvred facades to maintain comfort.
- Surrogate Model
- A fast reduced-order approximation trained on simulation results, used to explore many design variants.
- Porous Zone
- A region that imposes a pressure drop on the flow to represent a screen, louvre bank or vegetation without resolving its parts.
- Green Mark
- Singapore's green building rating scheme, with whose CFD criteria the course aligns its work.
- Urban Heat Island
- The elevated air and surface temperatures of a built-up area compared with its surroundings.
- Mixed-Mode Ventilation
- A building strategy that combines natural ventilation with mechanical systems depending on conditions.
Industry CFD Projects and Green Building Practice FAQ
How is the group project weighted and delivered?
It carries 40 per cent of the course mark, split equally between a presentation in week 13 on 11 November 2026, twenty minutes per group plus questions, and a report due on 15 November 2026 at 23:59.
Does the project have to use a real building?
The brief asks students to work on a real building drawing for practicality, as realistic as possible, and suggests sources for geometry such as OpenStreetMap with Blender, Rhino, AutoCAD and SketchUp, with a tutorial on geometry derived from OpenStreetMap.
What sections should the group report contain?
Six headed sections, beginning with an introduction and the motivating objectives, then method, scope and deliverables, and ending with the impact on industry. The last section is strongest when it names the design decision the simulation changes.
What is ODYSSEE used for in the course?
It is taught as an AI-enabled surrogate modelling tool that demonstrates reduced-order prediction for rapid design exploration, used with ANSYS Fluent or OpenFOAM, especially for the parametric study and optimisation in the group project.
How does Green Mark relate to the simulations?
The course description states that the course aligns with Singapore’s Green Mark CFD criteria to build competence in performance-based, climate-resilient design, and the rain lecture identifies particle tracking as compliant with the Green Mark code for wind-driven rain. Confirm the criteria that apply to a specific project in the current scheme documents.
Assessment move
Choose the industry example early and map it onto the chapters of this guide: which equations, which geometry simplifications, which boundary conditions, which outputs. Assign each team member a chapter to own, so the methodology section is written by someone who has checked that part properly.
