English

There is no doubt that, as part of this tendency to move to nearly zero energy buildings, in most climates buildings have to become more airtight. Should there be specific airtightness requirements? If so, what level is to be required? Should there be a minimum level of air leakage? This is the context for this project regarding the ‘philosophy about airtightness requirements’.

There are several national initiatives to collect air leakage data from field measurements buildings as a whole, building components, or ductwork systems. However, at this stage, there is no structured communication between these actions although they could mutually benefit from sharing their experience and encourage other similar initiatives in other countries having in mind the lessons learnt from the previous ones.

The European standard EN 15251 specifies design criteria for dimensioning of building systems. In detail, it proposes that the adaptive comfort model is used, at first, for dimensioning passive means; but, if indoor operative temperature does not meet the chosen long-term adaptive comfort criterion in the “cooling season”, the design would include a mechanical cooling system. In this case, the reference design criteria are provided accordingly the Fanger comfort model.

Many simulation software to predict thermal environment of buildings, such as temperature, humidity, heating and cooling load of building spaces, have been developed. However, most of them do not take into account moisture transfer in wall assemblies. Then, sensory index such as standard new effective temperature is even excluded from calculation. A Heat, Air and Moisture (HAM) simulation software called THERB for HAM has been developed for the purpose of estimating the hygrothermal environment within buildings.

This paper presents a library of simplified, yet accurate, physical models of the different components that can be found in a typical air-handling unit. Models development was focused on high accuracy with low computational cost aiming at the use of the library for real time applications like fault detection and diagnosis. Model library was developed to reduce to the minimum the initial data needed for setting up a simulation model. The data needed is commonly found in the datasheets provided by the manufacturer.

Along with the outdoor climate, building design, materials and construction system determine the thermal behaviour of buildings, the ability to keep indoor comfort conditions and the energy consumption through their lifespan. Buildings must provide comfortable indoor environment which should be reasonably assured regardless of climatic fluctuations. This paper presents a novel methodology for quantifying the hygrothermal discomfort risk of any building design.

In France, non-residential buildings account for a sig-nificant part in energy consumption. Moreover, a large part of this consumption is due to Heating, Ventila-tion and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) systems, which are generally badly handled. So, the present work deals with an efficient approach allowing energy consump-tion to be minimized while ensuring thermal comfort. In this sense, a predictive control strategy is proposed for existing zoned HVAC systems considering the Pre-dicted Mean Vote (PMV) index as a thermal comfort indicator.

Ventilation stacks are becoming increasingly common in the design of naturally ventilated buildings. Maintaining a certain airflow direction is crucial for a successful natural ventilation design. This article presents the experimental and theoretical investigation of unsteady wind effects on natural ventilation of a single envelope with multiple openings for wind and buoyancy combined cases.

We present a case study of the bioclimatic design of a passively-ventilated office building in a hot and humid region. A novel adaptive, locally-orientated comfort criterion, the UTCI, was used as a key metric. The design process was a hybrid of parametric assessment and manual design. Bioclimatic features assessed in this fashion cover massing, façade design and particularly shading configuration, where parametric analysis achieved a design that blocks 100% of direct solar gain. Post-occupancy evaluation was conducted to compare the actual conditions with the predictions.