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Thesis
Whole-building, variation of building parameters simulation for understanding contaminant retention rates: medium office building case study
Master of Science (M.S.), Drexel University
Sep 2011
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/etd-3660
Abstract
Cases such as the Legionnaires' outbreak in 1976 (Fraser, et al., 1977) has made it apparent that there is a need to incorporated indoor air quality driven design to promote building occupant health. More recently there has been an interest in understanding what level of protection buildings can provide to occupants against biologically weaponized contaminants based on building characteristics such as building type and vintage, as well as typical operating procedures. Current literature exposes a need to complete a whole-building, systematic variation of parameters assessment to understand how key (or pertinent) building factors relate to overall building contamination levels. This study uses recently collected data (Deru, et al., 2010) for a generic medium office building coupled with literature and CONTAM (Walton & Dols, 2005) simulation software, to complete a whole-building, systematic variation of parameters assessment ( a total of 810 simulation scenarios) to evaluate ranges of building factors and removal mechanisms to understand their relationship to overall contaminant retention rates. The pertinent building factors in this study include: air-handler outdoor air percentage, air-handler filtration, envelope filtration, envelope leakage, interior surface deposition, supply-side duct deposition, as well as average outdoor temperature and wind speed for Baltimore, MD. Results suggest that contaminant retention rates are highly sensitive air-handler operation and outdoor air percentage, and that interior surface deposition is a large removal mechanism for these simulations.
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Details
- Title
- Whole-building, variation of building parameters simulation for understanding contaminant retention rates
- Creators
- Liam Timothy Hendricken - DU
- Contributors
- Jin Wen (Advisor) - Drexel University (1970-)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Master of Science (M.S.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Civil (and Architectural) Engineering [Historical]; College of Engineering (1970-2026); Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 3660; 991014632538904721