Displacement ventilation: A systematic review of the interactions with indoor environment and simplified modelling approaches

Displacement ventilation is a buoyancy-driven air distribution strategy exploiting the convective heat sources’ thermal plumes to push the contaminants towards the ceiling. This review paper first analyses several aspects of the interaction between the displacement ventilation system and the enclosed space. In particular, the aspect of characteristic thermal stratification and air quality inside the thermal environment are presented. Then, the energy performance of displacement ventilation system is analysed. Secondly, the simplified modelling approaches to consider the displacement ventilation in building energy simulations are presented, examining their strong and weak points. To this purpose, the use of analytical models and empirical formulations are investigated. Also, nodal and zonal models for prediction of the vertical temperature profile are taken into account. Simplified cooling load calculation methods are also proposed to study the system energy performance while still using the well-mixed building models.