Development of a simplified multizone infiltration model.

Several infiltration models treat the complexity of air flows in multizone buildings, but most of them are written as research tools and are not generally available or user-friendly. Professional engineers and architects are in need of a simplified multizone infiltration model. This paper describes the first step in Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory's development of a multizone infiltration model for calculating the air flow distribution of a building without using any iteration procedure. To simplify the calculation procedure, buildings are classified into different categories, based on their ratios of permeabilities. These lumped parameters describing the air permeability distribution of a building are used to calculate its overall infiltration/exfiltration rate. The simplified multizone model described is illustrated by a sample calculation.