Identification of ventilation rates in residential buildings through temperature measurement

Natural ventilation plays a very important role in improving indoor climates and reducing energy consumption of residential buildings. This paper illustrates the identification of natural ventilation rates in residential buildings through temperature measurements. Room air temperatures were measured hourly from 1999-07-15 to 1999-08-09 in three non-air conditioned flats in Beijing. The room air temperatures were simulated using the state space method. The ventilation rate at each hour was identified in the simulation by minimizing the gap between the measured temperature and the simulated temperature for each room. The variation of the ventilation rates agrees well with the opening and closing of windows reported by the occupants. The ventilation rate range also agrees well with natural ventilation measurements.