air flow rates

The Spanish Technical Building Code is one of the three royal decrees that were approved in Spain as a consequence of the transposition of the European Directive on the energy performance of buildings (2002/91/EU) [1]. One basic document of the Technical Building Code deals with the limitations in the energy demand of buildings. Nowadays, due to the recast of the European Directive on the energy performance of buildings (2010/31/EU) [2], a revision process of the current regulations has begun, starting with the Technical Building Code, with its first revision envisaged for 2012.

The present work concerns the measurement and the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling of buoyancy-driven air flow through a stairwell that connects the two individual floors of a residential building. A series of experiments was performed in order to study the mas and heal transfer between the two floors. Air flow rates through this stairwell were measured using a single tracer gas decay technique. The analysis of results provided relations which can predict the mass and heat flow rate as a function of the inter-zonal average temperature difference.