duct

Noise remains a major concern for building occupants, both in their home and workplace. Ventilation system is one of the noise sources in buildings. Usually, the main issue is the resulting noise level in the room. It is generated by the fan and the ductwork components, travels inside ducts, and is then radiated into the room by air diffusers, air inlets, and air outlets. But ducts also go through other indoor spaces. Airborne noise will pass through the duct wall and radiate in the surrounding space. This can be an issue for occupants. 

Popular culture abounds with uses for duct tape: duct tape calendars, books like 101 Uses for Duct Tape, and more. But lab experiments have finally proved that duct tape, as it ii' generally used, should not be used to seal ducts.

Energy losses from forced air distribution systems have a significant impact on the energy efficiency of buildings. Little work has been done to quantify these losses in apartment buildings. In this paper we will discuss field measurements made on four forced air heating systems to evaluate the duct system energy losses to unconditioned basements. The apartments were heated by natural gas furnaces located in the basements. The systems had bare sheet metal ductwork exposed to the basement conditions.

This paper describes two recent applications of aerosol sealing techniques in buildings for improving indoor air quality and reducing energy required for heating, cooling, and ventilation. One application applies a commercially-available duct sealing technology, which has typically been used in single-family applications, to large-building exhaust systems. The initial leakage rates, percent leakage sealed, and issues encountered are presented for several large buildings.

Duct leakage has been identified as a major source of energy loss in residential buildings. Most duct leakage occurs at the connections to registers, plenums or branches in the duct system. At each of these connections a method of sealing the duct system is required. Typical sealing methods include tapes or mastics applied around the joints in the system. Field examinations of duct systems have typically shown that these seals tend to fail over extended periods of time.

Energy losses from forced air distribution systems have a significant impact on the energy efficiency of buildings. Little work has been done to quantify these losses in apartment buildings. In this paper we will discuss field measurements made on four forced air heating systems to evaluate the duct system energy losses to unconditioned basements. The apartments were heated by natural gas furnaces located in the basements. The systems had bare sheet metal ductwork exposed to the basement conditions.

This thesis is based on studies undertaken during the period 1998-2003 at the HVAC laboratory of Helsinki University of Technology.The thesis focuses on dust accumulation in, and removal from, recently installed supply air ducts and on the bristle behaviour of rotating duct cleaning brushes. The results of dust accumulation, measured using three different methods, were compared and the amount of dust in newly installed air ducts was evaluated. The vacuum tests was found to be an efficient method of collecting dust samples on the duct surface.

A simple model of a rotating duct cleaning brush was presented using large deformation elastic theory. The results obtained by the model were compared with the results obtained by a laboratory test. Especially, the effect of air drag on the brush behaviour was considered.

Rotating brushes are commonly used in cleaning air ducts. A very simple model simulating the behaviour of a typical brush bristle is presented. The model consists, in effect, of a combination of a polynomial trial solution, the point collocation method, Simpson's integration rule and a Mathcad code. The main interest from the cleaning point of view is in determining the contact force and the contact angle between the bristle tup and the duct surface. The effect of the degree n of the polynomial trial solution - n=4, n=6, n=8 - is studied.

The bristle of a rotating cleaning brush for air ducts was modelled using large deformaion elastic theory. The point collocation method with a trial solution consisting of undertermined parameters was employed to discretize the resulting non-linear problem. The main interest was in determining the value of the bristle tip contact normal force N, the bristle tip contact angle B and the torque T needed to rotate a brush. The results obtained using the simple model were compared with the results obtained from a laboratory test.