Analysis of the need of detailed modelling for the assessment of indoor air quality in residential buildings

Abstract

Home represents an important part of the time spent indoors and is the emblematic place of a family need, e.g. well-being, comfort and safety. In France, health agencies provide information and raise the awareness of the public on health risks and on factors likely to affect the quality of indoor air. However, indoor air quality remains difficult to assess for health investigators. A solution would be to resort to field measurements, but they are expensive and hard to apply to a large-scale population when considering the numerous pollutants found indoors. Therefore, numerical simulation represents a good alternative when accurate and realistic input data are used. We already designed such a model of a dwelling prototype using a type 98 coupling procedure between CONTAM (airflow rates and pollutants concentration determination) and TRNSYS (thermal and moisture calculation). We paid a lot of attention to the details that we thought were important: dwelling multi-zonal representation, envelope airtightness, ventilation system elements (pressure driven inlet and outlet, ducts, fan characteristics), presence of furniture, people activity and location… Nevertheless, the design of this simulation requires a very specific care. This very last point naturally induces a debate: is it necessary to design the simulation to be as accurate and realistic as it actually is, or will a simpler model provide similar results? In this study, we aim to answer that question by evaluating the sensitivity of the ULR-IAQ multipollutant index, defined in a previous study, to different levels of modelling complexity.