Windows are crucial for people's experience of the indoor climate, especially in the Nordic countries with cold climate and short days during the winter. This paper reports the first results from an ongoing research project focused on an improved integration of windows with the indoor air climate and people's perception of the windows. The thermal performance of a well-insulated window has been investigated both numerically and experimentally in a full scale test room. The window under consideration is a low-emissive triple-glazing window with two closed spaces filled with the inert gas krypton. An oxidised metal with low emissivity factor coats one pane in each space. Experimental and numerical investigations on the thermal performance of the window have been conducted for different winter cases. Temperature data obtained by direct temperature measurement using thermocouples and through numerical analysis are presented. The heat transfer through a window construction depends on three mechanisms i.e., conduction, convection and radiation. In this paper the convection-conducting mechanisms have been closely investigated. The numerical predictions agree well with the results from the measurements.

Since the climate in the Nordic countries is cold for several months a year, windows are crucial in building envelopes. The current trend to reduce heat losses by building components has resulted in many modifications to window design in order to improve thermal performance and the indoor climate. Improvements in window construction have resulted in a higher surface temperature on the inner pane and considerably lower downdraught, which in turn has created an opportunity for the unconventional design of the heating and ventilation systems. The impetus for this paper is to experimentally investigate the effect of thermal performance, window bay and displacement ventilation on the downdraught. The measurements show that the use of well-insulated windows, besides lowering energy consumption, gives rise to a higher quality of indoor climate. The results show a considerably reduced velocity and turbulent intensity by employing a well-insulated window instead of a conventional one. The influence of the window bay on the downdraught is also shown in the paper. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

The aim of this study was to compare ventilation performance of four different air supply devices in an office environment with respect to thermal comfort, ventilation efficiency and energy-saving potential, by performing numerical simulations. The devices have the acronyms: Mixing supply device (MSD), Wall confluent jets supply device (WCJSD), Impinging jet supply device (IJSD) and Displacement supply device (DSD). Comparisons were made under identical set-up conditions, as well as at the same occupied zone temperature of about 24.2°C achieved by adding different heat loads and using different air-flow rates. Energy-saving potential was addressed based on the air-flow rate and the related fan power required for obtaining a similar occupied zone temperature for each device. Results showed that the WCJSD and IJSD could provide an acceptable thermal environment while removing excess heat more efficiently than the MSD, as it combined the positive effects of both mixing and stratification principles. This benefit also meant that this devices required less fan power than the MSD for obtaining equivalent occupant zone temperature. The DSD showed a superior performance on heat removal, air exchange efficiency and energy saving to all other devices, but it had difficulties in providing acceptable vertical temperature gradient between the ankle and neck levels for a standing person. 

There is a new trend to convert the workplaces from individual office rooms to open offices for motivating money saving and better communication. With such a shift the ability of existing ventilation systems in meeting the new requirements is a challenging question for researchers. The available options could have an impact on workers' health in terms of providing acceptable levels of thermalcomfort and indoor air quality. Thus, this experimental investigation focuses on the performances of three different air distribution systems in an open-plan office space. The investigated systems were: mixing ventilation with ceiling-mounted inlets, confluent jets ventilation and underfloor air distribution with straight and curved vanes. Although this represents a small part of our more extensiveexperimental investigation, the results show that all the purposed stratified ventilation systems (CJV and UFAD) were more or less behaving as mixing systems with some tendency for displacement effects. Nevertheless, it is known that the mixing systems have a stable flow pattern but has the disadvantage of mixing contaminated air with the fresh supplied air which may produce lower performance and in worst cases occupants' illness. For the open-plan office we studied here, it will be shown that the new systems are capable of performing better than the conventional mixing systems. As expected, the higher air exchange efficiency in combination with lower local mean age of air for corner-mounted CJV and floor-mounted UFAD grills systems indicates that these systems are suitable for open-plan offices and are to be favored over conventional mixing systems.

People today spend a significant part of their time in an indoor environment, whether it be home, school, vehicle or workplace. This has put greater demands on indoor environment, in terms of both air quality and thermal comfort. The main objective of building ventilation is to take care of pollutants and lower their concentration, but it is also used to cool or heat indoor air. The aim of this paper was to study the behavior of three different ventilation supply devices, i.e. mixing supply device, displacement supply device and confluent jet supply device, in an office room. Different cases have been studied experimentally with different airflow rates, supply air temperature and supply devices. The results shows that mostly that we can expect, but the results show a very small difference in ventilation efficiency between the different systems and in theory there should be a larger difference. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Providing occupant comfort and health with minimum use of energy is the ultimate purpose of heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems. This paper presents the air-change effectiveness (ACE) within a typical office room using impinging jet ventilation (IJV ) in combination with chilled ceiling (CC) under different heat loads ranging from 6.5 - 51 W per square meter floor area. In this study, a validated CFD model based on the v2f turbulence model is used for the prediction of air flow pattern and ACE. The interaction effect of chilled ceiling and heat sources results in a complex flow with air circulation. The thermal plumes and air circulation in the room result in a variation of ACE within the room but also close to the occupant. For all studied cases, ACE is above 1.2 close to the occupants, indicating that IJV is more energy efficient than mixing ventilation.

People spend a significant part of their time in an indoor environment, whether at home, school or workplace. The aim of this paper is to experimentally study the ventilation effectiveness (mean age of air, MAA) and thermal comfort (PMV and PPD) of three different ventilation supply devices, i.e., mixing supply device (MSD), displacement supply device (DSD) and wall confluent jet supply device (WCJSD) in an office room.

This paper is based on analysis from full-scale measurements performed in a laboratory at University of Gävle. The size of the room corresponds to a typical office module for one person. The test room has dimensions of 4.2 x 3.0 x 2.4 m with a volume of 31.24 m³, with the size of the room corresponding to a typical office. Different heat sources are used to simulate the office environment, which corresponds to 31.75 W/m².

The PMV and PPD are comparable to MSD, WCJSD and DSD as it turns out that MSD has poorer comfort than DSD and WCJSD. DSD and WCJSD have more or less the same thermal comfort performance. When comparing the local mean age of air (MAA) for the studied supply devices, the air is significantly much younger for the DSD and WCJSD than for MSD.