Thermal analysis of naturally ventilated buildings.

A simplified electric analogue method to analyse the thermal performance of naturally ventilated buildings is presented. One of the main features of the method is that empirical constants in some equations account for typical rates of natural ventilation in conventional buildings. Another feature is that a very high degree of lumping is attained by using a special calculation procedure to estimate effective capacity values of building elements. The method is therefore extremely easy to use. Predictions are compared with measurements. The comparison is acceptable for design purposes.