Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
After a bit of thought ... maybe a better way to have asked the question would have been ...
How best to configure an infiltration object in E+ to match known performance obtained from blower-door tests?
From a standard test we can obtain characteristics such as ACH50, flow coefficient, pressure exponent, equivalent leakage area etc. These test results are for the whole building so it makes sense for the E+ model to work on a whole building basis.
The FlowCoefficient method allows flow coefficient and pressure exponent to be specified and then determines infiltration rates based on the other coefficients (to account for stack and wind pressures) but it's going to be tricky to implement well as previously discussed.
I would prefer to use the DesignFlowRate method but it's unclear to me how this method can be configured to match test results. The documentation says that the design flow rate is the maximum amount of infiltration expected at design conditions - but what value from the measurement data and what coefficients should be used?
I hope this question is a little clearer - ultimately I guess I'm looking for some kind of verification that the test performance is being replicated in the model.
| | 2 | No.2 Revision |
After a bit of thought ... maybe a better way to have asked the question would have been ...
How best to configure an infiltration object in E+ to match known performance obtained from blower-door tests?
From a standard test we can obtain characteristics such as ACH50, flow coefficient, pressure exponent, equivalent leakage area etc. These test results are for the whole building so it makes sense for the E+ model to work on a whole building basis.
The FlowCoefficient method allows flow coefficient and pressure exponent to be specified and then determines infiltration rates based on the other coefficients (to account for stack and wind pressures) but it's going to be tricky to implement well as previously discussed.
I would prefer to use the DesignFlowRate method but it's unclear to me how this method can be configured to match test results. The documentation says that the design flow rate is the maximum amount of infiltration expected at design conditions - but what value from the measurement data and what coefficients should be used?used (appreciating that the test does not provide information on site exposure or stack pressures)?
I hope this question is a little clearer - ultimately I guess I'm looking for some kind of verification that the test performance is being replicated in the model.
