TY - JOUR
T1 - A novel method for measuring air infiltration rate in buildings
AU - Liu, Wei
AU - Zhao, Xingwang
AU - Chen, Qingyan
N1 - Funding Information:
This research is partially supported by the national key R&D project on Green Buildings and Building Industrialization of the Ministry of Science and Technology , China, through Grant no. 2016YFC0700500 ; the National Natural Science Foundation of China through Grant no. 51678395 ; and the key project of the Applied Basic and Frontier Technology Research Program of Tianjin Commission of Science and Technology, China, through Grant no. 15JCZDJC40900 .
Funding Information:
This research is partially supported by the national key R&D project on Green Buildings and Building Industrialization of the Ministry of Science and Technology, China, through Grant no. 2016YFC0700500; the National Natural Science Foundation of China through Grant no. 51678395; and the key project of the Applied Basic and Frontier Technology Research Program of Tianjin Commission of Science and Technology, China, through Grant no. 15JCZDJC40900.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2018/6/1
Y1 - 2018/6/1
N2 - 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%.
AB - 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%.
KW - Air infiltration
KW - Infrared camera
KW - Thermography
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85044147689&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.enbuild.2018.03.035
DO - 10.1016/j.enbuild.2018.03.035
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85044147689
SN - 0378-7788
VL - 168
SP - 309
EP - 318
JO - Energy and Buildings
JF - Energy and Buildings
ER -