《A comparison of the power law to quadratic formulations for air infiltration calculations》.pdf

LBNL - 41447 A comparison of the power law to quadratic formulations for air infiltration calculations Published in Energy and Buildings, Vol. 27, No.3, June 1997. Iain S. Walker*, David J. Wilson** and Max H. Sherman* * Energy Performance of Buildings Group Energy and Environment Division Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, CA, USA ** Department of Mechanical Engineering University of Alberta Edmonton, AB, Canada 1 Synopsis Although the power law has been broadly accepted in measurement and air infiltration standards, and in many air infiltration calculation methods, the assumption that the power law is true over the range of pressures that a building envelope experiences has not been well documented. In this paper, we examine the validity of the power law through theoretical analysis, laboratory measurements of crack flow and detailed field tests of building envelopes. The results of the theoretical considerations, and field and laboratory measurements indicate that the power law is valid for low pressure building envelope leakage. 2 Introduction The functional form of the pressure flow relationship for building envelopes has been a topic of debate. Historically, some practitioners supported a power law equation [1] and others a quadratic form [2]. The power law formulation has gained almost universal acceptance for building envelope leakage in: measurement standards for building envelopes, e.g., [3], [4], [5], ventilation standards, e.g., [6] and [7], and many infiltration models. Many of these standards and calculation procedures use the power law function to extrapolate from data measured at high pressure differences down to the pressures experienced by th