Modelling fluctuating airflow through large openings.

Fluctuating airflow thorough buildings is caused by temporal and spatial variations of wind-induced pressures around building envelopes, and include pulsating airflow and eddy penetrations. Two approaches using a multi-zone pulsating airflow model are introduced in this paper to study the eddy penetration and multi-way airflow through large openings. In the first approach, the eddy flow is considered to be caused by imperfect correlations among pressures at different points of an opening. The concept of aerodynamic admittance functions is employed to modify the wind pressure spectra to represent the net effect of fluctuating pressures over the area of the opening. The other approach considers a large opening as composed of a number of smaller airflow paths, each permitting only pulsating airflow. Theoretical solutions are compared with field experjmental results from the BOUIN test-house at CSTB, fiance.