Air infiltration rate distribution across Chinese five climate zones: A modelling study for rural residences

Abstract

Air infiltration rate is one of the fundamental parameters in the design and analysis of building environment, which is the fundamental mode of air exchange between indoor and outdoor in non-mechanically ventilated residences when doors and windows are closed. Most Chinese residential buildings have no mechanical ventilation equipment installed. Previous researches on Chinese housing have primarily focused on urban residences. However, the number of both urban households and rural households accounts for almost half of Chinese households. Considering the significant urban-rural differences in Chinese housing, there is an urgent need for researching the air infiltration rate in rural area. This study employed a multi-zone network airflow model approach to simulate the air infiltration rate of 111 rural residential samples in 13 Chinese provinces, obtaining the hour-by-hour results for a whole typical weather year of each sample. Thus, the distributions of air infiltration rate for each rural region were finally summarized. Additionally, we performed field measurements in 23 samples to validate the simulation results. According to the results, the mean value of air infiltration rate is larger than that of urban residences, and its distribution in each climatic zone generally follows a log-normal distribution. The results are expected to be applied for indoor air quality studies, building energy consumption analysis, and other frontiers related to architectural environmental design and analysis.