English

Ventilation systems are designed based on the air flow volume required to ventilate the room, the same applies to façade-integrated ventilation devices operating in alternating mode, also referred to as push-pull devices. Those rather small devices represent a simple way to provide fresh air and air-to- air heat recovery for residential dwellings. The present research aims to analyse the ventilation effectiveness of push-pull devices experimentally. Hence, a tracer gas analysis is performed in a residential building.

In school and office buildings, the ventilation system has a large contribution to the total energy use. A control strategy that adjusts the operation to the actual demand can significantly reduce the energy use while guaranteeing a good indoor environmental quality (IEQ). This is important in rooms with a highly fluctuating occupancy profile, such as classrooms and open offices. A standard rule-based control (RBC) strategy is reactive, making the installation 'lag behind' in relation to the demand.

The relation between the concentration and particle size of the human breathing and the way in which these particles are dispersed in hospital indoor environments are studied in this research. Breathing thermal manikins are used to, experimentally, simulate a human person and its breathing activity. Two breathing thermal manikins are placed in a hospital room, simulating an infected patient, together with another standing manikin simulating a health worker.

Particulate matter (PM) is one of the most critical pollutants affecting indoor air quality (IAQ). Hence, reducing the exposure of occupants to indoor PM pollution is critical. Ventilation systems for commercial and residential buildings are instrumental for achieving this goal.

The importance of moisture control in indoor environments is increasingly recognized Air humidity affects buman bealth and comfort, and it is also connected to the durability of several building components and to energy efficiency. In many cases, it is possible to control the level of humidity with passive solutions, taking advantage of the moisture buffering capacity of hygroscopic materials. Nevertheless, current standards do not give any prescriptions on this matter.

This paper focuses on a thermal simulation model of office rooms and experiments necessary to adequately estimate the required model parameters. For this, we investigated step responses for different parameters, e.g. the set point temperatures of the façade ventilation units and the concrete core activation, in the E.ON ERC Main building, to enable predictive modelling of the temperature in the office rooms.

Data from mechanical extract ventilation units of Renson Ventilation nv installed in Belgium is utilized to detect space occupancy through machine learning. Challenges with the detection of occupancy using data captured by these smart devices are (1) absence of labelled data for training a machine learning model, and (2) occupant’s CO2 generation rate and building layouts influence the measured CO2 concentrations, which prevents simple rule-based models to be used for data labelling.

In this paper, a new mathematical model was developed experimentally to quantify the air volume flow by natural ventilation through window tilt opening. The experiment was carried out with two test facades in a laboratory building in Aachen, Germany. The test facades are equipped with windows in two different dimensions, and they are located under real weather conditions. The modelling data were determined by means of more than 70 tracer gas measurements with CO2.

The balcony is defined as an in-between architectural element that has the ability to intermediate the indoor and the outdoor environmental conditions. Through history, distinct balcony solutions have been used to improve the indoor environment according to their suitability to different contexts and climate conditions. The main aim of this study is to evaluate the impacts of different balconies on indoor environmental quality (IEQ) of dwellings in the mild climatic conditions of Portugal.

As the industry shifts focus from indoor air quality (IAQ) to indoor environmental quality (IEQ), the need arises for its field consultants and inspectors to meet the demands of assessment, evaluation and control, particularly in established buildings with a longer history of operation.