The Building Environment Simulation and Testing Facility
The Building Environment Simulation and Testing Facility is a state of the art installation that is part of the Mechanical Building Systems Laboratory. The facility is used for education and research and is designed for full scale thermal and air quality research. It consists of an environmental and a climatic chamber each with its own HVAC system. Another important aspect of the facility is its sophisticated measuring and data acquisition systems that are used to ascertain the energy consumption, air quality, and thermal comfort of different HVAC systems both in the facility as well as on the site.
The Building Environment Simulation and Testing Facility was built in 2003 by funding from Penn State University and equipment donations from the HVAC industry. It is located on the University Park Campus in the basement of Engineering Unit A to provide convenience to students and researchers.
This facility has been designed for maximum flexibility to encourage a wide variety of research and testing programs. Both the HVAC systems and the control systems are reconfigurable such that components, subsystems or even complete systems may be easily installed modified and tested.
Details on the Equipment used to run the chamber and collect data can be found at the following sites:
Activities at Facility
- Room air and air contaminant distribution studies
- Development and evaluation of numerical models for indoor heat and contaminant distribution simulations
- Studies of thermal and indoor air quality performance of different ventilation strategies
- Energy performances of HVAC systems
- Evaluation of indoor environmental sensors and control systems