Abstract
The main project aim was. to develop an integrated design tool to analyze combined problems of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and thermal comfort for an entire building. The original aim has not been changed. The main success of the project is that the integrated tool is developed and that it was used for several cases studies. The tool was validated with on site-data, a step that no other study in this area has ever performed before. Further improvements of the integrated tool should be made to sustain the project's long term vision of having this technology readily available in building design industry. The developed integrated tool has three major components: (1) building heat transfer and fluid flow models, (2) a heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) model, and (3) mass and heat source/sink models. The building models use a simplified CFD model to calculate IAQ and thermal comfort in a single zone and a multi-zone model, CONTAMW, to link the heat and mass transfer between zones for an entire building. The HV AC model use modules that can be easily used to form different HVAC systems. The mass and heat source/sink models use the coupled program of the modified CONTAMW and an energy analysis program, EnergyPlus, as well as various dispersion models. Therefore, the new integrated tool uses: 1. the modified multi-zone model CONTAMW; 2. the simplified computational fluid dynamics program CFDO; 3. the energy analysis program EnergyPlus. All of the programs are intergraded through coupling procedures to enhance performance of each individual program in IAQ and thermal comfort calculations for an entire building.