Comparative study of ventilation strategies in residential apartment buildings under uncertainty

In this paper, eight ventilation strategies in a typical apartment floor plan in Jeju, Korea were studied. In terms of size and floor plan, the chosen building is typical of residential buildings and consists of three bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. In this study, uncertainty propagation was introduced to treat the parameters which are not “deterministic” but “probabilistic” such as the stochastic nature of weather, the occupants’ behavior, building components, and simulation parameters. The ranges of the uncertainty parameters were selected based on data available from literature and on-site visits. The Monte-Carlo method with Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) was employed for uncertainty propagation. For the simulation of ventilation phenomena, CONTAMW 2.4 was chosen. The eight ventilation strategies with varying supply air rates and air inlet locations were assessed in terms of initial investment cost, energy cost, comfort level (PD: Percentage Dissatisfied, %), and CO2 concentration. It was found that the DCV-CO2 (Demand Controlled Ventilation-CO2 sensor-based) strategies save about 50% more energy than the CAV (Constant Air Volume) strategies.