English

In this article the author gives some guidelines and techniques to conduct IAQ investigations at low cost for school staff with small budgets : first he advises occupant interviews, followed by a physical survey of the premices. An IAQ toolkit at low cost can be prepared for a first level type of investigation.
Then a monitor data analysis can be made with the measurements of temperature, relative humidity and CO2.
Finally an hypothesis can be developed even with little background and small budget.
But particular problems may require an experienced consultant.

An effective and successful O&M (operation and maintenance) program for schools begins at the very start of the project and not at its facility completion : key design issues must be covered during planning and design phases. The owner must be identified and listened to, the understanding of how the O&M staff works, what its capabilities and technology skill level are, will help in designing the right facility within the capability of available resources.

This paper is a report on humidity control in schools mainly located in hot and humid climates : according to the US Department of Energy's investigation, most of them, use packaged cooling equipments that are not able to manage space humidity effectively when delivering a high percentage of outdoor air. Those schools don't respect the requirements of the ANSI/ASHRAE standard 62-1999.
By using the dedicated outdoor system (DOAS) approach, ventilation effectiveness and humidity control can be improved and meet the recommendations of the ASHRAE 62-1999 standard.

A heat and mass transfer model of a walking clothed human has been developed in that study. That model predicts the transient thermal responses of the human and clothing giving temperatures, and latent heat losses. A mathematical model was developed for the simulation of the dynamic thermal behavior of clothing and its interaction with the system of human thermoregulation under walking conditions.

A heatlhy environment at work has become a real preoccupation. It began first in offices but now it exists in industry which was reluctant up to now in spending money for it, because the output responsibles were not convinced that such an investment could bring an output gain. A loss of productivity can depend on the ambiant temperature for example.

A numerical investigation has been made on the effect of thermal and mass buoyancy forces on the development of laminar mixed convection between vertical parallel plates with uniform wall heat and mass fluxes. Some parameters such as velocity, temperature and concentration are presented and their incidence on heat and mass transfer between the plates is discussed for both positive and negative values of the buoyancy ratio. Results and discussions are presented.

That study aims at proving that the use of low-polluting building materials leads to an improvement of the air quality. For the experiment the space of an office qualified as low polluting has been altered by introducing indoor pollution sources (such as linoleum, wooden shelves, books and paper documents) and an outdoor air supply rate altered too. The concentrations of VOCs were measured in those different conditions along with the perception of the air quality assessed by a panel of 30 female subjects.

A large opening has to be designed at the bottom of a Void (light-well in high-rise apartment building) in order to keep the indoor air quality (IAQ) acceptable, because of the exhaust gas discharge of the gas water-heater. This paper presents a simple calculation method of the ventilation rate induced by wind force and thermal buoyancy through openings at the bottom, along with heat sources such as water-heaters.

There is a relationship between geometric room parameters and the air flow patterns produced by mechanical ventilation systems. Experimental measurements of indoor air flows in a one-tenth sub-scale model room were made and compared to numerical simulations. The results show how obstructions can influence the air flow and contaminant transport in a room.

Experiments were operated to estimate the influence of temperature and humidity on the perception of odours in the air by trained and untrained persons .