Christos D. Argyropoulos, Mishma Abraham, Hala Hassan, Atif Ashraf, Eleni Fthenou, Eman Sadoun, Konstantinos E. Kakosimos

A methodology is presented for investigating particulate matter (PM) building ingress during a dust storm event in Doha, Qatar, by using advanced numerical modelling techniques. More specifically, a combination of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and multi-zone models were used. The first is adopted for computing the external wind pressures including the meteorological effects, while the latter is a multi-zone model for indoor air quality (IAQ). The use of QUIC-CFD model improves the computation of wind pressures, velocities and pollutant concentrations, while the outputs of CFD model can be used as inputs to CONTAM. This combination is superior for more realistic predictions of airflow and pollutant transport in large buildings. The numerical predictions obtained are compared with measurement data during the dust storm event, presenting satisfactory agreement.

Keywords: Dust storm; Indoor air quality; Infiltration; Modelling; QUIC; CONTAM

Pp 1-6

DOI: 10.14644/dust.2016.001