Airflow through horizontal openings.

This paper deals with the interzonal air movement in a building, throughhorizontal openings, under natural convective conditions. These airflow phenomena areinvestigated experimentally, through a series of experiments in the stairwell of a full-scalebuilding, using tracer gas technique. The resulting time-dependent concentration evolutionoffers a means of analyzing the flow field. These cases are also simulated by a CFD code, thatuses the finite-volume method and incorporates a low-Reynolds k-E two equation turbulencemodel. The simulations results regarding the concentration and velocity, are in goodagreement with experimental data. Results indicate that the contaminant transmission andconsequently the airflow pattern is quite complex and is affected by geometry, location ofheat and contaminant sources, building materials and microclimate. The study also discussesthe effectiveness of CFD modeling to describe airflow phenomena through horizontalopenings, under various conditions. The results could be used to develop accurate algorithmsfor inclusion in existing mathematical models.