From energy crisis to sustainable indoor climate – 40 years of AIVC Selected papers from the 40th AIVC Conference, 15–16 October 2019

Abstract

In the past 40 years, since the first oil crisis in the seventies, energy and climate goals have been shaping many countries’ policy and legislative agendas. The building sector plays a crucial role in achieving these goals, considering the energy use attributed to buildings and its huge potential for improved energy performance. Whereas in the past most of the focus was on reducing the energy consumption, it is now clear that better performing buildings must ensure an acceptable Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), by providing higher Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and comfort levels for their occupants. Building ventilation entails both challenges and opportunities to achieve this goal. Since 1980, the annual conference of the Air Infiltration and Ventilation Centre AIVC has been the meeting point for presenting and discussing major research results and developments regarding infiltration and ventilation in buildings. In 2019 the AIVC completed its 40th year of existence and the conference organisers thought that it would be good to pay attention to the evolution during these 40 years. This is the context which defined the core theme of the joint 40th AIVC, 8th TightVent and 6th Venticool Conference, organised in Ghent, Belgium: ‘From energy crisis to sustainable indoor climate – 40 years of AIVC’. Over 120 contributions were presented at the conference after a call for abstracts on aspects of smart ventilation in relation to indoor air quality and health, building and ductwork airtightness, and ventilative and resilient cooling. There were two separate calls for abstracts and papers depending on whether the authors were interested in the peer review of their papers or not. This special issue of the International Journal of Ventilation presents a selection of the peer reviewed conference papers addressing issues raised by the conference topics. The analysis of infiltration related energy use is the subject of a Spanish study (Poza-Casado et al.). The study aims to assess the energy impact of uncontrolled airflows through the envelope in residential buildings in Spain. For this purpose, airtightness results of more than 400 blower door tests have been analyzed, showing great potential for energy saving in the country through better air tightness. However, in projects where airtightness requirements are imposed, testing procedures to measure air infiltration should allow to obtain reliable test results in an affordable way. Three other papers are dealing with these issues. A new test device for building air tightness is introduced and validated by a Dutch research team (Lanooy et al.), using the buildings ventilation system for pressurisation, to allow for a cheaper and faster test procedure. Prignon et al. contribute to the quantification of uncertainty in pressure and air flow rate measurements in fan pressurisation tests, by analyzing the uncertainty in zero-flow pressure approximations due to short-term fluctuation of wind speed and direction during testing. Further, a paper by