A study has been made, both experimentally and analytically, on the characteristics of thermal performance of high-rise buildings using a simulated model building with five floors and a number of exterior openings under various temperature distributions. The effect of the temperature variation on the location of the neutral pressure level (NPL) was of particular interest of the present study.
A simplified model of air infiltration has been developed at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, in order to expand the use of air flow calculation techniques outside the field of research. The validity of the programme must be checked. Benefit has been gained from work dedicated to the same problem in the field of building thermal analysis. Following this idea, a detailed validation methodology is proposed. Progression in the complexity of the modelled structures, use of high accuracy data are sine qua non to this task.
A simplified pocket calculator model has been developed which can simulate the air flow distribution in multizone structures. The model is based on lumped parameters and includes several assumptions to simplify the description of air flow due to wind and stack effect and their superimposition. This paper gives a brief overview of the model and describes several applications. Results obtained from a mainframe based research tool. The examples show that the simplified method can be used to predict air mass flows within reasonable accuracy for different types of buildings.