Thermal-Airflow Coupling in Hourly Energy Simulation of a Building with Natural Stack Ventilation

Natural ventilation dominates in Polish residential buildings. It is a simple and low-cost system but its performance is affected by varying environmental conditions. Hence, setting up constant ventilation airflow results in errors when calculating heating and cooling energy. In this paper, an attempt to integrate the buoyancy effect in natural ventilation of a residential building at hourly resolution with the hourly simulation method of EN ISO 13790 to obtain energy use for space heating and cooling is presented. The ping-pong coupling algorithm was proposed and applied. Hourly variation of ventilation airflow rate was from -26.8 m(3)/h (flow from outdoor to the interior of the building) to 87.2 m(3)/h with 55 m(3)/h on average. The lack of a cooling system resulted in overheating during summer and indicated the necessity of its application or use of other techniques to reduce solar gains. Application of the cooling system resulted in an hourly ventilation rate from -38.0 m(3)/h to 87.2 m(3)/h. Detailed simulation in EnergyPlus and statistical analysis proved the applicability of the proposed method in stack-induced ventilation assessment. The coefficient of determination R-2 = 0.936, mean squared error MAE = 5.72 m(3)/h and root mean square error RMSE = 7.86 m(3)/h.

Automated summary

Natural ventilation is widely used in Polish residential buildings, but its performance is affected by environmental conditions. This paper proposes the integration of buoyancy effect and hourly simulation method to calculate energy use for heating and cooling. The study demonstrates the effectiveness of using a cooling system to reduce overheating.