A multi-layer-zone smoke movement simulation model was developed. The model can predict the vertical distributions of the temperature and the gas concentrations in a bouilding with multiple compartments. The basic concept of this model is to divide the volume of a compartment into an arbitrary number of horizontal lavers, in which the temperature and other physical properties are assumed to be uniform. Considering mass and enthalpy flow rates through the layer interfaces and openings and heat transfer rates for each layer, zone equations for the temperature and the species mass fractions are derived. Some results of the sample calculations are demonstrated. It is considered that the model can be a practical tool to predict the behavior of fire for designing building.

View full abstract

This paper presents both experimentally and analytically the fire-resistance of concrete-filled steel tube (CFT) columns without fire-protection. Six of CFT column specimens, with rectangular or circular sections of 300mm to 500mm in size, were heated for three hours in accordance with ISO-834. A transition of the temperatures measured inside of concrete was simulated successfully by the numerical thermal analysis, in which the thermal conductivity of concrete was taken as 0.8 times of the value prescribed in Eurocode 4 (EC4), and the specific heat of concrete taken as 1.2 times. Based on the numerical thermal analysis for the CFT columns, a non-linear stress analysis was carried out taking into account the under-high-temperature behaviors of concrete as prescribed in EC4. It turned out that, for the heating tests of the axially loaded CFT columns, the stress analysis could possibly explain the deviation in the previous experimental data by allowing a tolerance to the standard heating curves prescribed in ISO-834.

View full abstract

Live fire load is an important parameter for performance oriented fire safety design of a building. While its investigations have been carried out on residential and commercial buildings and so on, little effort has been paid for the rational treatment of fire load in distribution facilities which have been recently increasing in both numbers and size. Many contemporary distribution facilities are built normally with long-span steel or concrete-filled-tubular structure and there is general demand to remove smoke extraction from the "storage" like large compartments partly for significantly low population density in such facilities. In this report, a methodology of measurement and prediction of fire load in large distribution facilities is developed and applied to large central post office buildings. This method is essentially to reproduce the time history of fire load by taking the transfer of post packages from room to room and into and from the building. Recommended live fire load fbr fire safety design, 351MJ/m^2 is finally determined by taking the fire load covering its 95% on a busy day.

View full abstract

This study investigates the current status of overlapped auditory information given at railroad stations and the evaluation on provided auditory information at platforms. The experiment was performed by visually impaired persons and sighted individuals. The survey revealed that factors affecting hearing of audible information include (1) excessive noise caused by passing trains, and (2) superposition of provided auditory information. The impression evaluation in the experiment which is focusing on overlapped auditory information results that the ways of grasping which receives from each situation and valuation basis by different attribute will have great difference compare with the provided situation of different auditory information.

View full abstract

In this paper, the measured results of environmental noise in provincial cities are discussed. We measured the environmental noise in the provincial cities of Nagano Prefecture for the past 19 years. The measured results are as follows. 1. In commercial zones and belong arterial roads areas, environmental noise was great. 2. In residential zones and agricultural zones, at environmental noise was small in many areas, but in some areas the noise level was high, due to loud road traffic noise. 3. We compared the data with past measurement results. In commercial zones and industrial zones, environmental noise decreased averagely. In residential zones and agricultural zones, L_<Aeq> and L_5 got smaller, but L_<50> and L_<95> got larger. These results indicate that at many areas in the city noise levels were uniform.

View full abstract

In Hokuriku region, the well-insulated and air-tightened housing is going to meet the entrance of the popularization stage, and it becomes important to investigate and clarify the thermal environment and the energy consumption of the houses. Then, in this study, both of temperature & humidity data of the indoor air and energy consumption data are measured on 3 filly electrified houses over 1 year, and the result is reported. The analysis is carried out using the data recorded in the every time, and the application of the electric power consumption has been classified for space heating, cooling, hot water supply, electromagnetic cooking, lighting & power, etc. Through analysis of the observed annual data, the followings were shown: (1) The characteristics on the thermal environment of the well-insulated and air-tightened houses which locate in Hokuriku region. (2) Difference and diversity of heating and cooling operational method based on resident way of living. (3) Energy consumption level for heating and cooling per unit floor space of the well-insulated and air-tightened houses.

View full abstract

The purpose of this research is to develop a simplified design method fbr an air-based solar heating system with a rock bed storage tank. In this paper, several equations to determine capacity of rock bed and collector area according to design conditions, are obtained. They are derived from results of system simulations and the necessary and sufficient capacity of rock bed is calculated by using the equations. And the design method using several simple equations is presented. And as a result of system simulations under various design conditions, it is found that the simplified design method allows to design appropriate heating system under ordinary design conditions.

View full abstract

In generally ventilation design are considered under completely mixed condition of contaminants in a whole room. However contaminants in a room are not always uniformly distributed and it is necessary to introduce the concept of ventilation efficiency into the ventilation design. From the viewpoint of energy conservation, the necessity for minimizing the ventilation rate with the indoor contaminant concentration level controlled under the restriction value is high. In this paper, the values of the normalized concentration in an occupied zone (Cn) in an office space are calculated by CFD simulation techniques for several different ventilation systems and the minimum ventilation rate, which maintained the averaged concentration in an occupied zone under the regulated values, are analyzed using Cn indices. Furthermore, energy consumption and CO_2 emission associated with the change in ventilation rate are analyzed. In this analysis, for most ventilation systems, the Cn is around 1.0, but it changes greatly depending on the supply inlet velocity and temperature for the large circulation flow system. In the case in which applied Cn index, the energy consumption decreased about 9.8% compared with the case in which assume perfect mixed condition in this analytical conditions.

View full abstract

The removal effect of NO_X (nitrogen-oxides) is an important factor for finding the material cycle in urban environment. But there are few investigations carried out to characterize the removal efficiency of air pollutants by plants. In this paper, the removal effect of NO_X by adsorbing and absorbing on plants was studied experimentally. The chamber having NO_X concentration such as atmosphere environment was designed for the experiment. Plants were exposed to the environmental concentration level of NO_X in the chamber designed for the experiment, and the removal effects of partitioned parts of plants were evaluated as a NO_X sorption flux calculated by measurement data of decreasing trend for NO_X concentration in the chamber. The correlation of NO_X sorption velocity and C0_2 absorption velocity was evaluated.

View full abstract

The aim of this research is to demonstrate that Formaldehyde (HCHO) emission rates of porous materials are influenced strongly by coefficient of air change performance within test chamber. For the study, a full-scale stainless chamber (19.68m^3), a boundary layer type test small chamber (0.4m^3), and a field and laboratory emission cell (FLEC, 3.5×10^<-5>m^3) are used. The paper presents results of measurements of HCHO emission rates from Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF, JIS grade E2) in the three different chambers. The coefficient of air change performance within the three chambers is examined by CFD analysis. The pore volume fraction and tortuosity factor of MDF are measured by mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP) method. The Knudsen diffusion within MDF could be ignored. The convection mass transfer coefficient of HCHO from MDF is computed by CFD and emission experiment. It is demonstrated that the convection resistance over the Boundary surface of porous materials could not be ignored when compared with the diffusion resistance.

View full abstract

Subjective experiments with a non-isothermal task conditioning system were conducted to investigate impacts of the system on thermal comfort and productivity in a climate chamber of Kanto-Gakuin University. Japan. All subjects participated in 'default condition test: 26℃/50%RH' at first. Then a half of the same subjects participated in 'standard condition test: 26℃/50%RH' and the remainder subjects participated in 'task-ambient test: 30℃/50%RH+TAC', just one week later again separately. Thermal, humidity, comfort sensations, and other psychological factors were investigated. The way the subjects controlled the task system was also monitored. In addition to that, subjective productivity was investigated from the subjective, physiological/mental, and performance assessment points of view. It was considered that the task conditioning system could keep people thermally comfortable even in 30℃/50%RH condition. Local thermal sensation was improved with TAC operation. Subjective symptom voting showed that the TAC operation had advantage to alleviate fatigue compared to the case without it.

View full abstract

We have large quantity of treated water from sewage disposal plant. It is valuable water source in the city. I pointed it out that we can utilize the treated water in the buildings, that already have facilities for wastewater reclamation and waterworks for miscellaneous use in the inner city district of Tokyo. I examined distribution and concentration of such kind of buildings. After the survey I found comparatively high concentration in the area around Tokyo station and there is a possibility that we can utilize the treated water from sewage disposal plant effectively in that area.

View full abstract

The author examined the quantity and quality of the water to clarify the status of rainwater utilization during at newly-built elementary and junior high schools during the year. The following results were obtained: 1) The flushing water in toilet was found to be sufficiently within the range of use compared with the standard of purity of the water for miscellaneous use. 2) The dirt stuck on screens was found to affect the surrounding environment. 3) The precipitated sludge was accumulate about 6 mm per year. Therefore, adequate maintenance is necessary for rainwater utilization. 4)The substitution rate of rainwater was more than 50%, and about 50% of the toilet water was rainwater.

View full abstract

The amount of fluorocarbons involved in building insulation foams as blowing agents is discussed with numerical analysis and measured data in this paper. The diffusion process of fluorocarbons in insulation foams can be expressed as a simple one dimensional diffusion equation. Effective diffusivity and initial concentration of CFCs and HCFCs are necessary to calculate the decrease of concentration with the analytical solution of the diffusion equation. The initial concentration can be obtained from the information of manufactures. In order to study the effective diffusivity, the calculated concentration of CFCs and HCFCs is compared to the measured data. Many samples were collected in various areas in Japan and their CFCs and HCFCs concentrations were measured by the gas chromatography method. The emission rate of CFCs and HCFCs was estimated by the analytical solutions with the effective diffusivity and initial concentration and the database of remained volume for various ages and areas is obtained in this paper. The total amount of CFCs and HCFCs can be estimated with this database and another database of the building insulation stock that will be discussed in Part 2.

View full abstract

In this paper, the relation between utilization of air conditioner and indoor thermal environment was examined, and occupants' indoor thermal environment control behavior was modelized. Besides, a method to estimate indoor thermal environment and air conditioning energy consumption in a residential house with both natural ventilation and air conditioner was developed. By applying this method to a standard house model, the effects of natural ventilation on indoor thermal condition and air conditioning energy consumption in Osaka were grasped. The results are as follows: (1) When air conditioner was turned on, average indoor SET^* was about 19℃ in heating season and 27℃ in cooling season. Therefore, agreeable thermal environment in room without air conditioning is between 19℃ and 27℃ by SET^*. (2) It is clear that the method developed in this paper is able to estimate indoor thermal environment and air conditioning energy consumption with reasonable accuracy. (3) Utilization of fan enables air conditioning energy consumption at living room to be reduced by about 35 %.

View full abstract

The objective of this study is to clarify the key points for better disposal of the building demolition waste such as concrete, wood, metal and mixed waste, based on surveys in the fields of waste disposal. The surveys based on 21 plants on the issues of the disposal waste showed that the impurities contained in construction waste formed major obstacle to better disposal. It is also suggested that those impurities were causing increased amount of landfill and C0_2 emission. Therefore it is important that consideration should be given to remove of those inpurities in the previous stage to waste disposal.

View full abstract