The objective of this research was to investigate thermal comfort with respect to the mass of the building inside a test room which is naturally ventilated. The room is an existing portable cabin of light mass, located at Loughborough University. The comfort parameters for different mass of the cabin were predicted. For this purpose a simulation package, is used to calculate the thermal parameters defined by Fanger. Medium and high thermal masses were added to the test room and their effects on thermal comfort were investigated.

A new thermal simulation model, QUICK II, is presented and numerous verification case studies performed on naturally ventilated buildings are discussed. Four new case studies performed on two buildings located in the Negev desert in Israel are discussed in detail. All the measurements pertaining to these new case studies were taken independently by the Desert Architecture Unit of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for Desert Research. These measurements are provided, along with a description of the buildings.

The largest-ever exercise to validate dynamic thermal simulation programs (DSPs) of buildings has recently been completed. It involved 25 program/user combinations from Europe, the USA and Australia, and included both commercial and public domain programs. Predictions were produced for three single-zone test rooms in the UK. These had either a single-glazed or double-glazed south-facing window, or no window at all. In one 10-day period the rooms were intermittently heated and in another 10-day period they were unheated.

The objective of this research is to investigate air flow distribution inside a light weight test room which is single sided naturally ventilated. The ventilation rate into the room is controlled by adjusting four sets of louvres. The local outside air temperature, humidity, pressure, wind velocity and direction were measured. Inside the room the velocity and direction of the inflow air across the high and low level openings, temperature and velocity distribution at four locations and six levels across the room were recorded.

The effects of surface air movement on material emissions were investigated experimentally. A field study was carried out to understand the characteristics of surface air movement in real rooms, and a velocity-controlled test chamber was designed and built, based on the field study results, to provide a uniform mean air flow and boundary layer condition over the test area. An extensive experimental study on the effects of air movement on material emissions was carried out, under different mean flow velocities and turbulence fluctuations, by using the small velocity-controlled test chamber.

This paper deals with the description and determination of the purging flow rate, U_P for ventilation systems or equivalent flow systems. The regional purging flow rate and its use are discussed and proposed. By using the mass conservation principle, U_P is embodied in various accessible mathematical expressions in terms of the transfer probability. Some U_P-related parameters are described. A Markov chain model is proposed for determining the transfer probability and exploring several useful ventilation indices.

Computational fluid dynamics may be used to predict the details of airflow in rooms served by displacement ventilation systems, provided a suitable turbulence model can be found. Since buoyant plumes are central to the displacement ventilation strategy, four turbulence models - three eddy-viscosity models (the 'standard' k-s model, a modified k-s model, and an RNG k-s model) and the Reynolds stress model - were applied to simulate airflow in a turbulent buoyant plume.