A simplified procedure to investigate airflow patterns inside tall buildings using COMIS

This paper describes a preliminary study aiming to show that a complex building can be modeled by a simplified one. Recently many tall buildings have been constructed in the world and, due to their height, they lead to tall air columns inside the buildings and other ones outside. This causes a pressure difference, well known as stack pressure. A large number of zones are required to model airflow patterns inside each floor in such high-rise buildings. Therefore, a large number of links between zones is also required. The COMIS software, which is a multizone model, has been used in this simulation. COMIS is a very powerful tool for a multizone building. However, the COMIS code has limitations regarding the number of zones and links, number of pollutants, etc. Therefore, a simplified procedure consisting of merging and gathering a few storeys in the original model into one storey taking into account all the relevant parameters is more than desirable. A simplified model based on the original one with 14 storeys above ground and five floors below ground has been considered. Results of the simulation show that this approach could be used while accuracy is still satisfied. Further research is needed to compare these simulated results with measured data.