VA-89-06-6 -- The Coupled Airflow and Thermal Analysis Problem in Building Airflow System Simulation PDF

The Indoor Air Quality and Ventilation Group at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST, formerly the National Bureau of Standards) has developed a method of building airflow analysis, based upon element assembly techniques, that has been successfully applied to the determination of the macroscopic characteristics of infiltration, exfiltration, and interzonal airflows in complex building airflow systems driven by wind pressures, buoyant forces, and the building HVAC system. This analytical method was formulated to be compatible with a discrete thermal analysis method, also based on element assembly techniques and developed earlier, which may be applied to problems of building thermal analysis.

This paper will review the theoretical bases of these two related methods and present a theoretical framework for integrating the flow with the thermal analysis methods to solve the coupled airflow and thermal analysis problem in building airflow system simulation. Formulation of the coupled airflow-thermal analysis problem will be presented and numerical methods for the solution of this problem will be outlined.