Ventilation efficiency assessment in residential buildings.

Ventilation efficiency may be defined as the capability of a given ventilation system to achieve the best balance between indoor air quality and energy conservation requirements:

• inside a room, ventilation efficiency is depending on air diffusion, which is mainly governed by air terminal devices and characteristics,
• in a partitioned building, ventilation efficiency is depending on air flowrates distribution, i.e.: air change values in each room as a function of time.

This second aspect is addressed in the present paper: a method based on a multizone computer model is derived; this proposed method makes it possible to quantify the efficiency of the different ventilation systems in residential buildings.