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Since the 1970s, many authors have discussed the impact of poor airtightness on building energy use, indoor air quality, building damage, or noise transmission. Nowadays, because poor airtightness affects significantly the energy performance of buildings, and even more significantly with low-energy targets, many countries include requirements for building airtightness in their national regulations or energy-efficiency programs. Building pressurization tests are increasingly used for compliance checks to energy performance requirements and may result in severe penalties. Therefore, the uncertainty of the measurement results has become a key concern in several countries over the past few years. More specifically, several studies have shown the significant uncertainties induced by the wind. Nevertheless, further investigations are needed to understand how the wind impacts pressurization tests and to characterize the error induced by the wind on the test results.
The goal of our work is to increase the reliability of building air leakage measurements results regarding steady wind impact. Starting from model-scale experiments in controlled laboratory conditions, we propose to improve uncertainty estimates and tests protocols.