English

The importance of moisture control in indoor environments is increasingly recognized Air humidity affects buman bealth and comfort, and it is also connected to the durability of several building components and to energy efficiency. In many cases, it is possible to control the level of humidity with passive solutions, taking advantage of the moisture buffering capacity of hygroscopic materials. Nevertheless, current standards do not give any prescriptions on this matter.

This paper focuses on a thermal simulation model of office rooms and experiments necessary to adequately estimate the required model parameters. For this, we investigated step responses for different parameters, e.g. the set point temperatures of the façade ventilation units and the concrete core activation, in the E.ON ERC Main building, to enable predictive modelling of the temperature in the office rooms.

Data from mechanical extract ventilation units of Renson Ventilation nv installed in Belgium is utilized to detect space occupancy through machine learning. Challenges with the detection of occupancy using data captured by these smart devices are (1) absence of labelled data for training a machine learning model, and (2) occupant’s CO2 generation rate and building layouts influence the measured CO2 concentrations, which prevents simple rule-based models to be used for data labelling.

In this paper, a new mathematical model was developed experimentally to quantify the air volume flow by natural ventilation through window tilt opening. The experiment was carried out with two test facades in a laboratory building in Aachen, Germany. The test facades are equipped with windows in two different dimensions, and they are located under real weather conditions. The modelling data were determined by means of more than 70 tracer gas measurements with CO2.

The balcony is defined as an in-between architectural element that has the ability to intermediate the indoor and the outdoor environmental conditions. Through history, distinct balcony solutions have been used to improve the indoor environment according to their suitability to different contexts and climate conditions. The main aim of this study is to evaluate the impacts of different balconies on indoor environmental quality (IEQ) of dwellings in the mild climatic conditions of Portugal.

As the industry shifts focus from indoor air quality (IAQ) to indoor environmental quality (IEQ), the need arises for its field consultants and inspectors to meet the demands of assessment, evaluation and control, particularly in established buildings with a longer history of operation.

Envelope air leakage testing of new residential buildings is becoming more common in the United States as state energy codes and energy efficiency programs add testing requirements. Leakage testing procedures and standards for single-family homes are straightforward; however, for low-rise multifamily buildings, there is little consensus on what type of envelope leakage should be applied to the standard or how leakage should be measured.

The purpose of this study is to suggest a heat pump-driven liquid desiccant (HPLD) air conditioning system for a residential building and preliminarily evaluate the cooling performance of the suggested system. The suggested HPLD system is composed of a liquid desiccant unit for the humidity control of process air with a liquid desiccant solution, and a heat pump unit for the temperature control of the desiccant solution and the process air.

Sensor errors have an important impact on the operation, control, and detection of building energy systems. Correct and reliable sensors can effectively reduce the energy consumption of building energy systems. Virtual in-situ calibration (VIC) based on Bayesian inference and Markov Chain Monte Carlo method that no need to increase extra or install new sensors can effectively reduce systematic error and random error of the sensor and increase the reliability.

By using natural driving forces, hybrid ventilation systems reduce fan energy consumption in buildings. They are of increasing interest as they help to improve buildings energy efficiency while ensuring good indoor environmental quality. However, the performance of these systems is variable and dependent on climatic conditions. Besides, the plurality of openings, variable airflows, and unstable flow patterns make the measurement of the performance of natural or hybrid ventilation systems a challenging task.