BIB 12: Review of Airflow Measurement Techniques

Airflow measurement techniques are necessary to determine the most basic of indoor air quality questions: "Is there enough fresh air to provide a healthy environment for the occupants of the building?" This paper outlines airflow measurement techniques, but it does not make recommendations for techniques that should be used. The airflows that will be discussed are those within a room or zone, those between rooms or zones, such as through doorways (open or closed) or passive vents, those between the building and outdoors, and those through mechanical air distribution systems. Techniques that are highlighted include particle streak velocimetry, hot wire anemometry, fan pressurization (measuring flow at a given pressure), tracer gas, acoustic methods for leak size determination, the Delta Q test to determine duct leakage flows, and flow hood measurements. Because tracer gas techniques are widely used to measure airflow, this topic is broken down into sections as follows: decay, pulse injection, constant injection, constant concentration, passive sampling, and single and multiple gas measurements for multiple zones. Selected papers are annotated, and a bibliography is included for each topic with full abstracts.