The objective of this paper is to present a new method for estimating effective flow areas not only in the external wall of a house but also in the internal walls between rooms using only one type of tracer gas. The discharge coefficient of each wall and the pressure in each room—which are unknown variables—are determined using nonlinear simultaneous equations, which consist of balance equations for the air mass and tracer-gas concentration in the rooms. To verify the validity of this method, we performed a numerical experiment.

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.

It is foreseen that the 2012 version of the French regulation will include a minimum requirement for the envelope airtightness of residential buildings, with two options to justify its treatment: a) measurement at commissioning or b) adoption of an approved quality management approach. This paper describes the qualification process for authorizing technicians to conduct airtightness measurement when the result is to be used in the EP-calculation method. It also discusses the requirements set for approved quality management approaches.

In Japan, natural ventilation through large openings has been used for cooling in summer and medium season. However, air conditioner has become popular recently, because it is hot and humid in summer in most parts of Japan. It causes cooling energy consumption to rise continuously. Nowadays, as global warming has become a serious problem, natural ventilation has been considered as a key method for cooling energy conservation. However, there is insufficient knowledge of natural ventilation effectiveness on cooling energy conservation quantitatively.

In this study, an attempt is made to define building design variables for a medium-sized office building with individual office cells in order to provide sufficient summer comfort without active cooling in a moderate climate.
Firstly, an approach to take realistic window-opening behavior into account is proposed based on observational data in literature. A stochastic model is defined for an active and a passive user, representing the variability between individuals.

A mathematical model that reproduces fungal proliferation and morphological colony formation was developed on the basis of a reaction diffusion modeling approach. In this modeling, fungus was separated into two states, active and inactive, and it was assumed that active fungus moves by diffusion and reaction while generating and producing inactive fungus. The effects of temperature and humidity on fungal growth were explicitly incorporated in the reaction term of nutrient consumption/generation of active fungus in this governing equation.

In this paper, we created the CFD parts of four-way cassette type outlets for predicting easily the thermal environment of an office with packaged unit air-conditioning systems. At first we measured detail distributions of wind velocity around the cassette type outlets in two cases of angles of flap in an experiment room with particle image velocimetry (PIV).

The paper presents a study on the thermal behavior of a solar greenhouse set against one apartment of a residential eco-sustainable building in a temperate climate. Particular attention was given to the analysis of the contribution of solar radiation in winter heating in relation to natural ventilation. This study makes use of a transient energy simulation system named ESP-r (Environmentals System Performance - research).

An isothermal CFD study was made of a building perpendicular to the wind direction. The building was modelled with a closed façade, and consecutively with one and multiple openings. The sensitivity was investigated for different turbulence models, meshes and near wall treatments, both in 2D and 3D. A large sensitivity was found to the modelling options with regard to the predicted wind pressure coefficients (Cp) distribution, but less with regard to the predicted flow rate through the openings.

Recently, the hybrid air-conditioning system that used natural ventilation together with a mechanical air-conditioning was proposed. Hybrid air conditioning system is expected to be saving energy and maintain keep indoor thermal environment comfort.