laboratory measurements

This work is part of two French research projects “Durabilit'air1” (2016-2019) and “Durabilit'air2” (2021-2024), that aim at improving our knowledge on the variation of buildings envelope airtightness through onsite measurement and accelerated ageing in laboratory-controlled conditions.   
During a past AIVC conference, a publication of the Durabilit’air1 project has presented and discussed an experimental protocol for characterizing assembly of products for buildings’ airtightness in laboratory controlled conditions.   

The content presented comes from the Technical Note (TN) 71 “Durability of building airtightness” published on Airbase, the AIVC bibliographic database.

The airtightness of new buildings has significantly improved in the last two decades thanks to building energy performance regulations. However, until now, low knowledge is available about the evolution of buildings’ envelope airtightness. This work deals with the durability of buildings airtightness, and focuses on ways to better characterize it.

Museum showcases represent a peculiar confined space were ventilation and indoor climate conditions play an important role. Conservation of the works of arts, in fact, requires a control of the environmental parameters, with a tolerance usually far tighter than that required for assuring the comfort of people.

In natural ventilation systems fresh air is often provided through opening of windows. However, the knowledge of the performance of windows is rather limited. Computation of natural ventilation air flow through windows is most commonly made using discharge coefficients, that are regarded as being constant. The reported results show that the discharge coefficient for a window opening cannot be regarded as a constant and that it varies considerably with the size of the opening area, the window type and the temperature difference.

Nowadays the ventilated cooled beam is one of the most popular air-conditioning system, e.g. in Scandinavia and Central Europe. With such beams, it is possible to create high-quality indoor climate conditions, including thermal comfort and a low noise level within reasonable life-cycle costs. The beam is suitable for spaces with a high cooling requirement, low humidity load and relatively small ventilation requirement. Typically, the beams are used in offices and conference rooms.