Characteristics Of Pressure Distribution Caused By Stack Effect In High-Rise Buildings

Energy is the important basic resources of human-society’s development. There is hugeenergy consumption in china and building energy consumption gets a considerable part, soimplementation of building energy-saving has become imminent. High-rise Building is a kind ofnew architectural form with unique advantages. China has a rapid development in recent years,but the development of high-rise building is associated with many problems such as high energyconsumption, potential safety problems, and technical problems and so on. That isdisadvantageous for the development of building energy saving. Therefore speeding up thehigh-rise building energy conservation technology research is very important.Stack effect in high-rise building is a important reason of which lead bigger fire losses,increased winter air infiltration energy consumption and make a building functional disorder. Inthis study, we made field measurement of pressure distribution caused by stack effect in high-risebuildings. Different cases were simulated, including different wall tightness、different internalpartition and shaft cooling systems and also solutions for stack effect problems were proposed.The field measurements and simulation results indicated that the pressure differences acrossthe elevator door on the underground and lower floors exceeded25Pa, door sticking andwhistling problems occurred during the measurements，and cold air infiltrated across theentrance door. The Thermal Draft Coefficients varied from0.20to0.49. These values meant thatmost of the stack pressure difference in high-rise office buildings acted on exterior walls ratherthan on interior partitions.The method which includes improving the air tightness of the exterior walls and installingvestibule doors and corridor doors, the pressure differences across the elevator door reduced atleast55%. After vertical shaft zoning，the pressure differences across the underground elevatordoor reduced at least74%，means it is a effective measure of reducing the stack effect effective.The pressure differences of elevator door is reduced24%by using shaft cooling systems，thismethod can reduce the winter heating additional energy consumption.The simulation results indicated that when the exterior wall became tighter, the thermaldraft coefficient was increased, but when the internal partiontions increased, the thermal draftcoefficient reduced, and the ACH was reduced too, which means the energy consumption due tostack effect reduced.Countermeasures against the stack effect are required in all high-risebuildings.The stack effect must be evaluated in the primary stages of building design.