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Unfortunately, no current whole-year, whole-building simulation program is able to adequately describe what happens in an atrium. Stacking zones on top of each other will account for some of the effects and create some sort of gradient, but not the right one. In reality, the air is mixed by a large number of vertical mass flows, above each heat source (including patches of sunlight), at each wall surface, by mechanical ventilation jets etc.

Although a CFD model theoretically can describe the air flows involved, it would have to be fed with boundary conditions from some other tool first, making the study of the truly dynamical situation of an atrium extremely difficult and in every respect time consuming.

Unfortunately, no current whole-year, whole-building simulation program is able to adequately describe what happens in an atrium. Stacking zones on top of each other will account for some of the effects and create some sort of gradient, but not the right one. In reality, the air is mixed by a large number of vertical mass flows, above each heat source (including patches of sunlight), at each wall surface, by mechanical ventilation jets etc.

Although a CFD model theoretically can describe the air flows involved, it would have to be dynamically fed with boundary conditions from some other tool first, making the study of the truly dynamical situation of an atrium extremely difficult and in every respect time consuming.consuming. This is just not practical in every-day design work.