COMPUTER-AIDED BUILDING VENTILATION SYSTEM-DESIGN - A SYSTEM-THEORETIC APPROACH

An understanding of the pattern of airflow is an important element in the design of ventilation systems. The airflows are caused by wind effect, stack effect and mechanical ventilation systems. Several models have been developed to analyse the airflow in buildings. So far, the focus has been on the modelling process. In this paper, the modelling and analysis of building ventilation systems using a system-theoretic procedure are presented. The emphasis is on presenting a theoretic derivation of nodal-governing equations for building airflow systems and obtaining efficient procedures for automatic formulation of the system equations. This approach is based on matrix algebra, therefore is easy to implement on a computer.