On ventilation of a heated room through a single doorway

Laboratory experiments are presented to examine the transient filling of a room of buoyant fluid when a doorway connects the room to a large reservoir of dense fluid. These experiments confirm that the filling time of the room scales as (A/wH)(H/g')(1/2) where H is the doorway height, w the doorway width, A the floor area of the room, and g' the buoyancy contrast between the interior and exterior of the room. A model of the transient exchange flow is presented and shown to be in accordance with the experimental results. The more complex regime in which a source of buoyancy is also supplied to the room is then examined. It is found that a steady two-layer stratification becomes established, with the height of the interface, hi, dependent only on the aspect ratio of the doorway and the door height, h(i) = Hf-1(w/H), while the buoyancy contrast between the two layers, g', depends on both the buoyancy flux supplied to the room and the doorway aspect ratio g' = B-2/3 H-5/3 f(2)(w/H). The results imply that, in typical buildings, exchange flows require 5-100 min to fill a room once a door has been opened. Also, when a heated room is connected to a cold exterior by a doorway, a layer of air 5-15degreesC warmer than the exterior may be maintained above a cold layer near the floor. The depth of this cold layer depends on the aspect ratio of the doorway, but may typically extend over one-half the height of the door. In steady state, all the heat supplied to the room is lost through the doorway. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.