An analysis of the ventilation rates in residential buildings

Abstract

The ultimate goal of environmental buildings is to minimize the use of fossil fuels and resources while providing a comfortable environment for occupants. Through continuous research and development, the physical performance of the buildings has been greatly improved for this purpose. However, focusing only on physical performance, it is seen that there is a big discrepancy between predicted and actual performance of building by treating occupants, who are the most affective object of building and energy consumption, as simple passive elements. These results increase the energy and cost of the building and become an obstacle to the construction of environmentally friendly buildings. Among occupant behavior, window opening is the biggest factor of increasing heating and cooling energy consumption. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the ventilation rate of each window opening for being embedded in an energy simulation program. A method to analyze the ventilation rate was carbon dioxide decay method as shown in Fig. 1. As a result, the ventilation rate was affected by the wind direction and speed, and floor level, but was somewhat constant because of monsoon effect in summer and winter of Korea.