Relationship between air infiltration and acoustic leakage of building enclosures

Abstract

Air infiltration, the uncontrolled leakage of air into buildings through the enclosure from pressure differences across it, accounts for a significant fraction of the heating energy in cold weather climates. Measurement and control of this infiltration is a necessary part of reducing the energy and carbon footprint of both current and newly constructed buildings. The most popular method of measuring infiltration, whole building pressurization, is limited to small buildings with fully constructed enclosures, which makes it an impractical method for measuring infiltration on medium to large buildings or small buildings still under construction. Acoustic methods, which allow for the measurement of infiltration of building sections and incomplete enclosures, have been proposed as an alternative to whole building pressurization. These new methods show great promise in extending infiltration measurement to many more buildings, but links between the acoustic leakage characteristics and the infiltration characteristics of typical enclosures are required. In this paper, the relationship between the acoustic leakage and the air infiltration through typical building envelope cracks is investigated. [This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.].