Buoyancy-driven flow through a stairwell

The present work concerns the measurement and the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling of buoyancy-driven air flow through a stairwell that connects the two individual floors of a residential building. A series of experiments was performed in order to study the mass and heat transfer between the two floors. Air flow rates through this stairwell were measured using a single tracer gas decay technique. The analysis of results provided relations which can predict the mass and heat flow rate as a function of the interzone average temperature difference. These results were compared with values estimated by using validated CFD algorithms and showed very good agreement.