A novel method for measuring air infiltration rate in buildings

Measuring the air infiltration rate in buildings is essential for reducing energy use and improving indoor air quality. This rate has traditionally been determined by means of the blower door method, which is disruptive to building occupants, cannot identify the location of infiltration, cannot prov...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Energy and buildings 2018-06, Vol.168, p.309-318
Main Authors: Liu, Wei, Zhao, Xingwang, Chen, Qingyan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aerial thermography
Aerodynamics
Air filters
Air infiltration
Air quality
Air temperature
Building envelopes
Buildings
Byggvetenskap
Civil and Architectural Engineering
Decay rate
Energy consumption
Environmental chambers
Fluid mechanics
Heat transfer
Indoor air pollution
Indoor air quality
Indoor environments
Infiltration
Infiltration rate
Infrared camera
Infrared cameras
Infrared imagery
Parameter identification
Test chambers
Thermography
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Summary:Measuring the air infiltration rate in buildings is essential for reducing energy use and improving indoor air quality. This rate has traditionally been determined by means of the blower door method, which is disruptive to building occupants, cannot identify the location of infiltration, cannot provide the infiltration rate for a section of the envelope, and requires considerable effort for setup and tear-down. Therefore, this study has developed a novel technique to measure air infiltration in buildings using an infrared camera. A thermographic image of a building envelope produced by an infrared camera and the measured indoor/outdoor air parameters (velocity, temperature, and pressure) were used to identify the effective crack size and air infiltration rate by means of theoretical heat transfer and fluid mechanics analyses. The proposed method was validated by experimental measurements in an environmental chamber and an office. The experiment in the environmental chamber constructed a small-scale room with known crack size. The experimental setup was comparable to actual conditions. The proposed method was able to predict the crack size within a relative error of 20%. For the experiment in the office, this study used the tracer-gas decay method to measure the air infiltration rate, and the relative error of the calculated air infiltration rate was only 3%.
ISSN:0378-7788
1872-6178
1872-6178
DOI:10.1016/j.enbuild.2018.03.035