Experimental study

Throughout history, the human population has experienced major outbreaks of infectious diseases. In December 2019 the previously unknown SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged, which had a huge impact globally. Residents of long-term care facilities (LTCFs) showed to be highly susceptible to infection due to their frailty. Respiratory infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, can spread among others via the airborne transmission route. This is caused by sharing the same indoor environment.

The experiments are carried out in a climate chamber located at the Department of Civil Engineering Aalborg University. The objective of the experiments is to evaluate the performance of the system combining diffuse ceiling ventilation and thermally activated building construction (TABS) in terms of thermal comfort and energy performance. 20 cases with different boundary conditions are conducted varying on climate condition heat load. TABS water temperature and flow rate with or without diffuse ceiling.

This work presents an energy assessment of the natural ventilation performance within buildings located on both hot-temperate and mild-temperate conditions such as the existing along the central region of Mexico. With the assistance of a coupled thermalairflow simulation program, simulations are run without and with natural ventilation, respectively. Thereby, the consumption of air-conditioning presented in this region is validated with data from literature when natural ventilation is not applied.

Diffuse ceiling ventilation is a novel air distribution concept, where the space above a suspended ceiling is used as a plenum and fresh air is supplied into the occupied zone through perforations in the suspended ceiling panels. Due to the low momentum supply, the airflow in the room is driven by buoyancy force generated by heat sources. The previous studies indicate that the diffuse ceiling ventilation system can effectively eliminate the draught risk in the occupied zone and provide a comfortable indoor environment even with low-temperature supply.