In Amstelveen, The Netherlands, an apartment complex of forty two units has been build. Sixteen units are extreme low energy apartments. These apartments are very well isolated and have air tight facades.

Indoor air flow induced by a fan-coil unit in an air-conditioned environmental chamber is studied experimentally. The supply Archimedes number which is a macroscopic number describing indoor air flow is measured and related to the
centreline velocity and temperature decay of the cold air jet issued from the fan-coil unit. The space air diffusion and the thermal comfort using respectively the Air Diffusion Performance Index (ADP]) and the Predicted Percentage of  dissatisfied (PPD) are evaluated. Evolution of these indices with the supply Archimedes number is discussed.

When talking about air-conditioning systems in buildings people argue with high energy consumption of those systems. They do not take into account that it is not possible in many climates to realise several indoor thermal conditions by merely opening windows.Within the framework of the research project SANIREV, sponsored by BMBF and ROM, the Hermann-Rietschel-lnstitute make tests about the use of window ventilation. For different roomloads and out-door-conditions the room conditions are determined. Now we got the first results.

Within the framework of full-scale experimental validation of the global building energy simulation software programme CLIM2000 developed by Electricity Applications in Residential and Commercial Buildings Branch of Electricite De France (EDF is the French utility company) Research and Development Division, an experimentation has been carried out in a 100 m2 real house from Oct 95 to May 96. The first step was to predict in « blind way » the total electrical power consumption of the house on the basis of three different meteorological situations (cold, hot and medium).

Knowledge of the authority of control dampers in HVAC systems may be used for diagnostic purposes or to enhance control performance. In this paper, a method of estimating damper authority in air distribution systems is described. The method only requires measurements that are normally available in modem HV AC systems with digital controls. The method is based on a technique that allows the static pressure drop across a branch to be regulated even if that pressure is not measured. Experimental results on a Variable Air Volume (VA V) air handling unit demonstrate the efficacy of the method.

The indoor air quality of an actual variable air volume (VA V) heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HV AC) system in a building on the campus of the University of Missouri, Rolla has been analyzed, modified, and monitored. Components measured include temperature, relative humidity, C02, volatile organic matter (VOM), particulates, outside air flow rate, and building pressure. In addition to these parameters, the building is studied in normal operation, and for operation when the economizer damper was controlled to maintain minimum outside air.

At present, numerical simulation of room airflows is mainly conducted by either the Computational-Fluid-Dynamics (CFD) method or various zonal/network models. The CFD approach needs a large capacity of computer and a skillful expert. The results obtained with zonal/network models have great uncertainties. This paper proposes a new simplified method to simulate three-dimensional distributions of air velocity, temperature, and contan-finant concentrations in rooms. The method assumes turbulent viscosity to be a function of length-scale and local mean velocity.

This paper reports the analysis of the thermal performance of building envelopes of high-rise commercial buildings in the subtropical climate and their interactions with cooling system. Building constructions of commercial buildings in Hong Kong have been investigated and categorized. Their thermal performance and the resulting chiller load is studied with the building energy simulation tool DOE-2. lD. The characteristics of subtropical climate, coupled to high internal gains of commercial buildings, are discussed.