A coupled building ventilation and thermal model incorporating passive airflow components

This paper investigates the inclusion of passive airflow components such as solar chimney, and wind induced earth air tunnel into a coupled multi-zone ventilation and thermal model. Existing commercial coupled multi-zone ventilation and thermal modelling software do not include passive airflow components, which need a simultaneous prediction of temperature and airflow rate in the components. The present model is compared with the coupled COMIS-TRNSYS software for lightweight buildings with large openings and both the thermal and airflow prediction match with good accuracy. The predictions of individual passive airflow components are validated with available published analytical and experimental findings.