Contributions to Building Smoke, Airflow and Thermal Management

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In buildings, a well-controlled airflow delivers air with appropriate thermal conditions to an occupied space, and removes pollutants for achieving a safe, healthy, and comfortable built environment. It is therefore essential to understand the combined process of airflow, heat transfer and pollutant transport. In the previous discovery grant, the applicant developed his research niche in building airflow and thermal management focusing on the following two topics: a). High-rise building smoke management and fire safety. The smoke spread in high-rise buildings is a typical thermal airflow phenomenon, where the fire-induced thermal buoyancy may drive the smoke to spread far away from a fire source quickly via vertical and horizontal spaces. High-rise building fires are often disastrous and it is therefore of great importance to understand smoke movement process, and design reliable smoke control systems for high-rise buildings. b). Building thermal airflow management and energy efficiency. A well-managed building airflow and thermal system, e.g. through natural/hybrid ventilation (NV/HV) combined with thermal energy storage, is considered an effective measure for achieving energy efficiency goals. Long hours of natural free cooling make NV/HV well-suited for Canadian climates. The design and operation of NV/HV and building thermal mass represent another typical thermal airflow problem requiring fundamental understanding of the phenomena, and better methods and tools for the optimal design and operation. For this discovery grant renewal, the proposed research includes three major tasks 1). Theoretical study develop transient scaling method; 2). Numerical study further develop and verify multizone thermal airflow solver; 3). Application study evaluate and optimize designs and operations. Once completed, this research will contribute 1) a new general scaling method for conducting scaled experiments of building thermal airflow for the verification of the designs and operations of building smoke control systems, and natural/hybrid ventilation systems combined with building thermal mass; 2) a new public domain multizone airflow solver with the capabilities of modeling both building heat transfer and pollutant transport for designers, consultants and researchers to meet their increasing needs for faster and more accurate simulations; 3) a series of new real-world applications and the associated experiences to be shared with the community on high-rise building thermal airflow research based on the sub-scale experiments and full-scale numerical simulations; 4) the associated standards and codes for building fire safety and energy efficiency, especially for high-rise buildings. With the continual support from the NSERC discovery grant, the applicant will strive for contributing to his research niche areas, and the leading role of Canada in the respective field.