Building and Environment 219 (2022) 109171

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Building and Environment

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Predicting non-uniform indoor air quality distribution by using pulsating

air supply and SVM model
Xue Tian a, Yuchun Zhang a, Zhang Lin b, *
a
Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
b
Division of Building Science and Technology, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Mixing ventilation is the most common air distribution strategy, and often the same diffusers provide space
Indoor air quality cooling and heating. Although aiming to achieve uniform air distributions, there are still non-uniformities at
Support vector machine specific indoor locations. This study innovatively predicts the non-uniform indoor air quality (IAQ) distribution
Air age
with mixing ventilation, directly from air temperature and air velocity. Both heating and cooling cases are
Pulsating air supply
Non-uniform air distribution
conducted with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques, validated by the experimental measurements in
a multi-occupant office configuration. The comparison shows that the support vector machine (SVM) model
outperforms the back-propagation neural network (BPNN) and genetic algorithm back-propagation neural
network (GABPNN) models, with a medium computation time. The innovative method is demonstrated that the
pulsating air supply is useful in generating effective inputs, i.e., the dynamic variations of air temperature and
velocity during pulsating air supply (ΔT and Δv), for the air age prediction under the corresponding steady state
(τsteady ). ΔT and Δv can be fast obtained by monitoring the air velocity and temperature for 10–20 min. With a
random selection, the data size should be larger than 180 to reach the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE)
threshold value of 5%. However, it can also be reduced to 60 when the data points have a similar steady air
temperature. The prediction accuracy under heating is slightly higher than that under cooling, as achieving good
mixing under heating is more difficult. We aim to provide guidelines on effective and measurable inputs and
valid data-driven models for non-uniform IAQ prediction.

There is a predicted mean vote (PMV) deviation of 1.5 between different

1. Introduction
Air distribution plays an important role in providing satisfactory
thermal comfort and indoor air quality (IAQ). Among various air dis­
tribution methods, mixing ventilation is the most common method,
applied to various rooms such as offices and classrooms, and often the
same diffusers provide space cooling and heating [1,2]. Mixing venti­
lation systems can be configured by “wall supply and exhaust” or
“ceiling supply and exhaust” [3]. It is supposed that the air distribution
under mixing ventilation is quite uniform, compared with methods that
aim to serve the occupied zone, e.g., displacement ventilation [4],
stratum ventilation [5] and impinging jet ventilation [6]. However,
there can still be non-uniformity of thermal comfort and IAQ when it
comes to specific indoor locations, due to room layouts, partitions, air
terminal positions, etc. For instance, slightly high air velocity levels
appear in local regions under mixing ventilation [1]. Temperature in­
creases with height as a cubic polynomial under mixing ventilation [5].
measurement points under mixing ventilation, along with a CO2 con­
centration deviation of 500 ppm [7]. The particle number concentration
is also not uniformly distributed under mixing ventilation [8]. Mixing
ventilation risks forming a significant vortex flow, resulting in local air
retention [9]. Generally, a perfect mixing condition is rare in reality.
Although the same diffusers are widely applied for both cooling and
heating, the air distributions with cooling and heating are different. The
range of the characteristic space length for the diffuser jet flow value
that can achieve good mixing indicated by air diffusion performance
index (ADPI) under heating conditions, is significantly smaller than that
under cooling mode [10]. Researchers found low ventilation effective­
ness under the heating conditions with mixing ventilation [2,11]. The
impact of the stratification and low ventilation effectiveness with mixing
ventilation for heating are taken into account by a correction factor in
the ASHRAE Standard 62.1 [12]. The perception of warm head and/or
cold feet is noticeable with mixing ventilation for heating, due to the
thermal non-uniformity [13]. In summary, the local non-uniformity

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: bsjzl@cityu.edu.hk (Z. Lin).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2022.109171
Received 11 February 2022; Received in revised form 12 April 2022; Accepted 3 May 2022
Available online 7 May 2022
0360-1323/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
X. Tian et al.
Abbreviations
ACH Air changes per hour
ADPI Air diffusion performance index
ANN Artificial neural network
BP Back-propagation
BPNN Back-propagation neural network
CFD Computational fluid dynamics
DOM Discrete ordinate method
GA Genetic algorithm
GABPNN Genetic algorithm back-propagation neural network
HVAC Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning
IAQ Indoor air quality
MAE Mean absolute error
MAPE Mean absolute percentage error
PMV Predicted mean vote
R2 Coefficient of determination
RBF Gaussian Radical Basis Function
RMSE Root mean square error
exists with both cooling and heating under mixing ventilation.
It is necessary to achieve energy reduction by improving the capa­
bility of the Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system to
adjust quickly and automatically, which is also an important feature of
intelligent buildings [14,15]. With the importance of IAQ for occupants’
health and well-being, monitoring and controlling the IAQ have long
been an important topic in the domain of indoor built environment.
Compared with the field measurements, prediction is non-invasive and
can be quick and inexpensive, which is essential for effective and timely
control [16]. Because of the complex input data that the mechanistic
models require, data-driven models serve as an alternative approach for
IAQ prediction [17]. Popular models include artificial neural network
(ANN) models, regression models, models based on decision trees, etc.
[17]. The models include various inputs, such as indoor pollutant con­
centration, outdoor conditions, indoor temperature, relative humidity,
etc. [16,18]. It should be pointed out that there is a possibility to predict
IAQ directly with the air distribution information to reduce labor and
material expenses on the IAQ measurements [19,20].
Considering the whole indoor environment as uniform to control can
result in thermal discomfort, poor IAQ at the occupied zone and energy
wastage [21]. Efforts have been made on accurately predicting
non-uniform environments. Zhao et al. have developed a theoretical
expression for the clean air volume in a non-uniform cleanroom envi­
ronment [22]. Zhang et al. used a polynomial model to predict the in­
door air temperature using the air supply and exhaust conditions under
stratum ventilation [19]. An online supervisory control predictive tool is
developed for the displacement ventilation system with chilled ceiling to
minimize energy consumption while achieving optimal IAQ and thermal
comfort [23]. However, few studies considered the non-uniform IAQ
prediction and the corresponding control under mixing ventilation.
Because it has been widely installed in existing buildings, it is essential
to retrofit mixing ventilation to be part of intelligent green buildings,
without major renovation in ventilation systems [24].
The present work aims to predict non-uniform IAQ conditions, using
the air temperature and velocity information, which is easier and faster
to obtain in practice. The developing process is achievable for signifi­
cantly stratified environments, while much more difficult for those with
mixing ventilation. Essentially, the major factors causing non-
uniformity are different. For stratified environments produced by stra­
tum ventilation, displacement ventilation, etc., the non-uniformity is
mainly due to the buoyancy or momentum of the supply air jets [25,26].
For mixing ventilation, the dominant causes are the distributions of the
heat sources and physical partitions, while the buoyancy and the supply
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Building and Environment 219 (2022) 109171
SVM Support vector machine
Nomenclature
Tduty Air temperature at the end of the duty period (◦ C)
Tidle Air temperature at the end of the idle period (◦ C)
Tsteady Air temperature under the steady state (◦ C)
τsteady Air age under the steady state (s)
vduty Air velocity at the end of the duty period (m/s)
vidle Air velocity at the end of the idle period (m/s)
vsteady Air velocity under the steady state (m/s)
vs− duty Supply air velocity during the duty period (m/s)
vs− idle Supply air velocity during the idle period (m/s)
vs− steady Supply air velocity under the steady state (m/s)
ΔT Dynamic variation of air temperature during pulsating air
supply (◦ C)
Δv Dynamic variation of air velocity during pulsating air
supply (m/s)
air jets also play roles [7]. Therefore, air quality stratification is
enhanced by the height of the room and thermal length [20], while such
enhancement is reduced with mixing ventilation. Generally, IAQ pre­
diction using air distribution poses a challenge because of reduced
effective inputs and complex variables. Steady air distribution infor­
mation may be insufficient, and the challenge is to collect effective input
data with minimal costs. Pulsating air supply is used innovatively to
produce effective input.
The technical route is thus developed as follows. Firstly, the exper­
iments with mixing ventilation in a multi-occupant office are conducted.
Secondly, the full-chamber computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models
are established, and validated using the experimental measurements,
under both steady and transient conditions. After conducting CFD sim­
ulations cases under both heating and cooling modes, three kinds of
data-driven models including ANNs and non-ANN, are developed. Ef­
forts are made to use the data-driven models to predict the IAQ from the
air distribution results, and the comparisons are presented. The goal is to
approach a sufficient prediction accuracy, by discovering the inputs
using pulsating air supply, and testing the algorithms. The prospect is to
guide the non-uniform IAQ prediction with mixing ventilation, towards
the right measurable inputs and applicable algorithms.
2. Methodology
Fig. 1 presents an example of pulsating air supply from the results of
the cooling case C-5 listed in Table 4. Pulsating air supply has been
investigated in buildings as a potential solution to increase both venti­
lation efficiency and thermal comfort [27]. The principle of the pulsat­
ing air supply introduced here, is to create cyclic air velocity and
temperature variations by controlling supply air condition [27]. A whole
cycle of pulsating air supply includes an idle period when the supply air
velocity is lower than the average of the whole cycle (i.e., 0–150 s in
Fig. 1), and a duty period when the air velocity is higher than the
average of the whole cycle (i.e., 150–300 s in Fig. 1). The changing
trends of the air temperature and air velocity at a point are drawn in
Fig. 1. Generally, during the idle period, the air velocity has been kept at
a relatively low value, and the air temperature has been increasing, vice
versa.
The flow diagram of the methodology is shown in Fig. 2. The process
aims to develop a method to use the air distributions to predict the air
age, as a representative of IAQ. As one of the common IAQ indicators, air
age refers to the time that air experiences from entering a room to
arriving at a particular location in the room, indicating the freshness of
X. Tian et al. Building and Environment 219 (2022) 109171

⃒ ⃒
ΔT = ⃒Tduty − Tidle ⃒ (2)

Fig. 1. An example of pulsating air supply (CFD simulated results of Case C-5
in Table 4).
indoor air [20]. Air age can be obtained experimentally by tracer gas
methods (pulse, step-up, and step-down (decay) method) or determined
numerically using CFD techniques. The steady-state method based on
the resolution of an additional transport equation is applied to deter­
mine air age, due to its low computation time and high reliability for
predicting [28]. The air age calculation is implemented into CFD
where, vduty is the air velocity at the end of the duty period, vidle is the air
velocity at the end of the idle period; Tduty is the air temperature at the
end of the duty period, Tidle is the air temperature at the end of the idle
period. An example of collecting the vduty , vidle , Tduty , and Tidle is pre­
sented in Fig. 1. The vsteady and Tsteady are proved to be effective inputs to
predict τsteady , as the air age distribution is determined by the air dis­
tribution [20]. The inspiration of using Δv and ΔT to be inputs to predict
τsteady is that, the Δv and ΔT (i.e., dynamic variations during pulsating air
supply) are closely related to the air supply condition and the location
characteristics under stratum ventilation [27]. As for stratum ventila­
tion, this relationship is more apparent as the fresh air is directly sup­
plied to the investigated breathing zone, compared with mixing
ventilation which contains longer routes of fresh air and more complex
turbulent air motions [5]. Therefore, larger data sets and data-driven
models are needed to discover hidden relationships.
The inputs and outputs of the data set are therefore filled in. After the
data collection, the data-driven models are developed. Several models
are established to make comparisons on the accuracy and computation
time, including back-propagation neural network (BPNN) models, ge­
Table 3
CFD settings.
Condition Steady (Steady air Transient (Pulsating air
supply) supply)

through user-defined functions (UDF). Turbulence model RNG k-ε [33,34]

As presented in Fig. 2, the experiments are first conducted to validate Discretization method Finite volume method [35]
Wall function Standard wall function [30]
the CFD models. The reason for choosing the CFD method to collect data
Buoyancy effect Boussinesq hypothesis [31]
is that the data-driven approach often requires a large amount of data, Radiation model DOM (discrete ordinate method) [31]
which is costly by conducting experiments. The CFD simulations with Pressure-velocity coupling SIMPLE [34]
steady air supply provide the information of the air velocity and air algorithm
temperature under the steady state (i.e., vsteady and Tsteady ), and the air Spatial discrete scheme Second order upwind schemes [34]
Time discrete scheme Null Second order implicit
age under the steady state (i.e., τsteady ). Simultaneously, the CFD simu­
scheme
lations with pulsating air supply provide the information of the Δv and Time step Null 0.1 s [34]
ΔT. The explanation of Δv and ΔT is presented as follows: Convergence criterion for 10− 4 [33]
⃒ ⃒ momentum residuals
Δv = ⃒vduty − vidle ⃒ (1) Convergence criteria for the other 10− 6
[33]
terms

Table 1
Information on measurement instruments.
Instrument Measured parameter Accuracy Range Sampling duration Sampling
frequency (Hz)

ALNOR EBT731 flow Airflow rate ±3% of reading 42–4250 2 min 0.017
hood m3/h
WYZ-1 temperature Temperature of the surfaces (i.e., walls, floor and ±0.3 C
◦
− 20–80 ◦ C 30 min 0.017
recorder ceiling); Room air temperature
SWEMA 03+ Air velocity at the sampling lines ±0.04 m/s at 0.5–3.00 m/ 10 min for steady air supply; 15 min 5
anemometer 0.05–1.00 m/s; s for pulsating air supply
±4% read value at
1.00–3.00 m/s
Air temperature at the sampling lines; Supply air ±0.1 ◦ C 10–40 ◦ C
temperature;

Table 2
Information on experimental cases.
Case Room air temperature Supply air temperature Exhaust air temperature Air changes per hour Air supply velocity (m/s) Cycle time
(◦ C) (◦ C) (◦ C) (ACH) (s)
The whole Duty Idle
cycle period period

Steady 23.2 ± 0.2 18.14 ± 0.1 23.7 20 0.56 ± 0.13 Null

Pulsating 22.8 ± 0.3 18.37 ± 0.2 23.7 20 0.56 ± 0.13 0.90 ± 0.20 ± 300
0.15 0.20

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X. Tian et al. Building and Environment 219 (2022) 109171

Table 4
CFD simulation cases.
Case Condition Airflow rate Supply air Supply air velocity of steady Supply air velocity of duty Supply air velocity of idle Length of
(ACH) temperature (◦ C) state vs− steady (m/s) period vs− duty (m/s) period vs− idle (m/s) cycle (s)

C-1 Cooling 20 16 0.55 0.9 0.2 1200

C-2 20 16 0.55 0.9 0.2 600
C-3 20 16 0.55 0.9 0.2 300
C-4 33 16 0.90 1.5 0.3 600
C-5 7 16 0.20 0.3 0.1 600
H-1 Heating 20 30 0.55 0.9 0.2 600
H-2 33 30 0.90 1.5 0.3 600
H-3 7 30 0.20 0.3 0.1 600

Fig. 2. Flow diagram of methodology.

netic algorithm back-propagation neural network (GABPNN) models
and support vector machine (SVM) models. The inputs are also tested, to
see if adding Δv and ΔT can improve the prediction accuracy, as adding
the measurements of Δv and ΔT is more complicated. The aim is to
predict the IAQ at different locations through the information that can
be relatively easily obtained and quickly measured.
2.1. Experiments
To validate the proposed model, experiments are conducted in a
chamber located at the City University of Hong Kong, China. This
chamber has six desks accommodating six occupants, which is config­
ured as a multi-occupant office. There is no window on the envelope.
The partitions are shared with adjacent spaces constantly air-
conditioned. The layout is shown in Fig. 3 (a). The dimensions of the
chamber are 7.8 m (length) × 5.3 m (width) × 2.4 m (height). The
occupant is represented by a human simulator with the dimensions of
0.4 m (length) × 0.25 m (width) × 1.2 m (height), with a 100 W light
bulb placed inside to simulate occupant heat generation [29]. The
diameter of the light bulb is 125 mm, and 98% of the total power is
converted to heat. Cheng et al. has proved by flow visualization that
such human simulator settings are effective to simulate the occupant’s
heat generation on the global air distribution [29]. Fourteen
ceiling-mounted lamps of 56 W each are also present. According to the
initial luminous flux, the initial luminous efficacy is calculated as 11%.
The luminous flux decays with the service time, meaning that at least
89% of the total power compensates for energy lost as heat. Here, we
consider the worst scenario in which 100% of the total power is trans­
formed into heat in CFD simulations. As shown in previous works, the
lights are distant from the occupied zone, and the errors are acceptable
[30,31]. Three air supply inlets (i.e., S1–S3 in Fig. 3 (a)) with the same
dimension of 0.6 m × 0.6 m are located on the ceiling. Also on the ceiling
are three air exhausts of the same size (i.e., E1-E3 in Fig. 3 (a)). They
configure a common mixing ventilation layout, i.e., “ceiling supply and
exhaust” [5,6].
There are 12 sampling lines arranged in the experimental chamber,
which are fairly evenly distributed throughout the room. Detailed lo­
cations of the sampling lines are drawn in Fig. 3 (b). Sampling Lines L1,
L3, L5, L7, L9 and L11 are located in front of the occupants. Lines 2, 4, 8
and 10 are between the tables. And Lines 6 and 12 are between the table
and the wall. Sampling Lines L1, L3, L5, L7, L9 and L11, adjacent to heat
sources, are positioned to represent the micro-environments around the
occupants, which are vital for evaluating the thermal comfort and IAQ.
The non-uniformity of the air distribution has a close relationship with
the layouts of the heat sources and partitions [7]. Other sampling lines
are positioned between the partitions where local recirculation may
appear [9]. Point L1-1.1 refers to the measuring point at the height of
1.1 m above the floor in Line L1, and so forth.
The supply air temperature and supply airflow rate (supply air ve­
locity) are controlled using a control system by varying the opening of
the chilled water valve and the frequency of the supply fan. The time
lengths of the complete cycle, duty period and idle period are controlled
manually. The supply airflow rates and the corresponding supply air
velocities are tested aforehand, to match the frequencies of the fan. The
ALNOR EBT731 flow hood is applied to measure the airflow rates of the
supply air inlets. Before experimental measurements, a period of 2 h
after turning on the air-conditioning system and the heat sources is
applied, to ensure that the room condition is steady. The room air
temperature is measured by the WYZ-1 temperature recorder positioned
at the geometric center of the room. Vertical sensor rigs attached with
SWEMA 03+ anemometers at the desired heights (i.e., 0.1 m, 0.6 m, 1.1
m and 1.8 m above the floor) are placed on the sampling lines. The
heights of 0.1 m, 0.6 m and 1.1 m are chosen to represent the ankle level,
the abdomen level and the head level for a seated occupant [25]. The
height of 1.8 m represents the upper part of the room. The supply air
temperature is measured at the three air supply inlets (see Fig. 3 (a)).
The exhaust air temperature is monitored by the control system. The
information on the measured parameters and the measurement in­
struments is presented in Table 1. Table 2 summarized the detailed
conditions of the experimental cases. The lengths of the duty and idle

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X. Tian et al.
Fig. 3. (a) Layout of experimental chamber (b) Locations of sampling lines
(Note: H1–H6: Human simulators; T1-T7: Tables; L1-L14: Lights; E1-E3: Air exhausts; S1–S3: Air supply terminals).
periods are the same during a complete cycle. The complete cycle length
is 300 s. Room air temperature of 23 ◦ C is considered, and the airflow
rate is 20 air changes per hour (ACH), approaching the parameter
choices in previous studies [5,29,32].
2.2. CFD settings
2.2.1. Computational set-up
The room configuration used in CFD numerical simulation is
consistent with the experimental chamber, as shown in Fig. 3. The
commercial CFD software ANSYS Fluent 19 is adopted. The CFD settings
are listed in Table 3. The RNG k-ε model has been proved to be a tur­
bulence model suitable for predicting indoor airflow characteristics,
both for steady and transient conditions [33,34]. The discretization
method of the control equation adopts the finite volume method due to
its high balance of the physical quantity [35]. The standard wall func­
tion simulates the turbulent flow in the near-wall area [30]. The Bous­
sinesq hypothesis is adopted to consider the buoyancy effect, and the
discrete ordinate method (DOM) is selected for radiation [31]. The
SIMPLE method is adopted as the pressure-velocity coupling algorithm
[30]. Under steady air supply conditions, second order upwind schemes
are adopted for both convective and viscous terms. The convergence
criterion of momentum residual is set as 10− 4, and that of mass residual,
5
Building and Environment 219 (2022) 109171
turbulent kinetic energy residual, turbulent dissipation residual, energy
residual and radiation intensity residual is set as 10− 6 [33]. For pul­
sating air supply, that is, under transient conditions, the second order
upwind scheme is used for spatial discretization of all physical quanti­
ties, and the second order implicit scheme is used for time discretization
[34]. After testing different time steps, the size of 0.1 s is enough to
ensure the convergence of the solution for each time step.
All solid surfaces are designated as no-slip walls. The right-side wall
is considered the exterior wall in CFD simulations, with 30 ◦ C for cooling
and 15 ◦ C for heating conditions. The human simulators and lamps are
set as the constant-heat-flux surfaces, with the values of 61.6 W/m2 and
155.6 W/m2 referring to the experiments, respectively. The air supply
inlet is set as a velocity-inlet [30]. The air supply velocity is independent
of time for the steady air supply, with a given constant value. For pul­
sating air supply, the air supply velocity is defined by UDF. Air exhaust is
simulated as outflow.
2.2.2. Mesh generation
ICEM software is used to grid the built room model. As all indoor
objects are cuboids, the grids are structured hexahedral. In order to
improve the accuracy of simulation, the meshes near air terminals, heat
sources and non-adiabatic wall surfaces are refined, since the air ve­
locity and temperature gradients of these positions are relatively large. A
X. Tian et al. Building and Environment 219 (2022) 109171

grid independence check is conducted. Three grids are generated. Their predictions by data-driven models [18,32,36]. The high value of R2 in­
cell numbers are 722,155 (coarse), 2,201,846 (medium) and 3,949,506 dicates a well-fitted curve, while the relatively low values of MAE, RMSE
(refined) respectively. As the cells are all structured hexahedral, the and MAPE indicate how close the results are. They are calculated using
skewness is unity. The aspect ratios are 18 for the coarse, 14 for the the following formulas:
medium and 6 for the refined. When the simulation results do not
∑
N
significantly change with the increase of the number of grids, the grid (yi − xi )2
dependence is reached, and the grid with the minimum cell number to 2
R =1 − (i=1 ( )2 (1)
reach the consistent results is selected [4]. The maximum relative dif­ ∑ ∑
N N
1
xi − xi
ferences of 80 points on four sampling lines (i.e., Lines 3, 4, 5 and 10)
N
i=1 i=1

between the coarse and medium grids are 2.4 ◦ C for air temperature, and
0.09 m/s for air velocity. The numbers decreased to 0.6 ◦ C and 0.02 m/s 1 ∑N

between the medium and refined grids. In summary, the cell number is MAE = |yi − xi | (2)
N i=1
chosen as 2,201,846.
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
∑N 2
i=1 (yi − xi )
RMSE = (3)
2.3. CFD validation N

In order to prove that the models and calculation settings used in the N ⃒ ⃒
1 ∑ ⃒yi − xi ⃒
simulation can accurately predict the air distribution, we validate the MAPE = ⃒ ⃒ (4)
N i=1 ⃒ xi ⃒
CFD model using the experimental measurements. The boundary con­
ditions, i.e., the wall temperatures and air supply parameters used in the where, xi and yi are the measurement and CFD prediction respectively,
CFD validation, are consistent with the actual conditions in the experi­ and N is the amount of data. For evaluating the prediction accuracy of
ment (see Table 2). The coefficient of determination (R2 ), mean absolute the data-driven models, xi and yi are the predictions by the CFD and
error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute per­ data-driven models, respectively.
centage error (MAPE) are calculated to evaluate the consistency be­
tween the CFD simulation results and experimental measurements or

Fig. 4. Comparison between experimental and CFD results.

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X. Tian et al.
2.3.1. Steady condition
For steady air supply, the velocity and temperature of 16 points at
four levels (i.e., 0.1 m, 0.6 m, 1.1 m and 1.8 m) along four sampling lines
(i.e., Lines 3, 4, 5 and 10), are taken as the data for comparison between
experiment and CFD, as shown in Fig. 4. Different heights and horizontal
positions are considered to avoid contingency. Lines 3 and 5 are near
heat sources and air supply terminals. Line 10 is distant from those,
while Line 4 is in-between. For air velocity and temperature, the
maximum differences between CFD results and experimental results are
about 0.2 m/s and 0.5 ◦ C respectively, which are acceptable. For air
velocity, the MAE value is 0.05 m/s and the RMSE value is 0.05 m/s. For
air temperature, the MAE value is 0.33 ◦ C and the RMSE value is 0.40 ◦ C.
The MAE and RMSE results are similar to those in a previous study [31].
In conclusion, the CFD model applied can accurately predict the air
distribution under a steady air supply. The later simulation will be
conducted with this validated model.
2.3.2. Transient condition
Since the supply air velocity with pulsating air supply changes with
time, the air velocity and temperature at a certain measurement point
are transient rather than steady against time. As the periodically-varying
air supply velocity determines the periodically-varying air distribution,
a larger number of cycles insignificantly affect the prediction accuracy.
Therefore, the changing trends of air velocity and air temperature over a
complete cycle (300 s) are compared with the experimental measure­
ments, as shown in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 respectively. A total of 6 mea­
surement points are selected for validation, including four sampling
lines and three heights. With pulsating air supply, the large turbulence
intensity results in a great uncertainty of the instantaneous velocity and
temperature. Therefore, it is difficult to ensure that the instantaneous
velocity and temperature are well fitted at every moment. Figs. 5 and 6
show that the trends between the experimental and CFD results over
Fig. 5. Comparison between transient CFD and experimental results of air temperature.
7
Building and Environment 219 (2022) 109171
time are basically similar. It should be noted that the measured Δv and
ΔT in Figs. 5 and 6 are lower than 0.3 m/s and 1 ◦ C, respectively.
Therefore, an instantaneous deviation of 0.4 (standardized) is accept­
able. In Fig. 6, the applied CFD model cannot accurately simulate the
irregular turbulence shown in the measured air velocity results [35].
The CFD results are quite similar to the experimental results after
de-composition [27]. The vduty , vidle , Tduty , and Tidle shown in Fig. 1 are
generated using the CFD results, which reflect the difference in the air
velocities between the idle period and the duty period, even better than
the experimental results, reducing the influence brought by the irregular
turbulence. As we only collect the Δv and ΔT values rather than
instantaneous values of each moment, the transient CFD model is used to
predict the air distribution under pulsating air supply with an acceptable
error level.
2.4. CFD simulation cases
The CFD simulation cases, five for cooling and three for heating, are
listed in Table 4. The supply air temperatures for cooling and heating are
maintained at 16 ◦ C and 30 ◦ C, respectively. Three supply air velocities
under the steady state (vs− steady ) are applied for both cooling and heating,
i.e., 0.55, 0.90 and 0.20 m/s. The corresponding airflow rates are 7, 20,
and 33 ACH, respectively. The supply air velocity of the duty period
(vs− duty ) is set at 150% of the vs− steady , and the supply air velocity of the
idle period (vs− idle ) is set at 50% of the vs− steady . Three cycles of varied
lengths, 300 s, 600 s and 1200 s, are applied. A previous study concluded
that mixing ventilation needs at least 910 s to reach the set-point tem­
perature [4]. A shorter time length is beneficial for obtaining the air age
information quickly. The lengths of the duty and idle periods are the
same during a cycle.
X. Tian et al. Building and Environment 219 (2022) 109171

Fig. 6. Comparison between transient CFD and experimental results of air velocity.

2.5. Data-driven model algorithm [41]. The hyperparameters chosen based on references or
repeated testing are presented in Table 5.
To predict IAQ using mechanistic models may appear trustworthy; To optimize BPNN further, genetic algorithm (GA) is added to opti­
however, the specific mechanisms between the air distribution (i.e., the mize initial weights [47]. The term “genetic algorithm back-propagation
air velocity and air temperature) and IAQ at a specific location are not neural network (GABPNN)” refers to the combination of GA and BPNN
well established. The data-driven model can be very useful as an alter­ explained as follows. At the beginning of the process, GA conducts a
native. The data-driven models used in this study are all established global search on weight ranges and finds out the best initial weights for
using Matlab. There are numerous data-driven models to achieve our BPNN. Then, the BPNN starts training with the best initial weights based
goal. According to a review article, ANNs have emerged as the most on GA, thus approaching the optimum solution [47]. The workflow of
frequently used model in HVAC systems [37]. The BPNN and the GA is presented in our previous study in detail [20]. The hyper­
GABPNN models are chosen as representatives as ANNs. The aim is to parameters are chosen based on suggestions in a previous study with a
validate if the inputs contain adequate information to predict the out­ small number of parameters and are presented in Table 5.
puts, rather than determine which data-driven method is the most ac­
curate. Therefore, three methods, including ANNs and non-ANNs, are 2.5.2. Support vector machine
presently applied. The SVM is another typical method for regression and classification.
The objective of the SVM algorithm is to find an optimal separating
2.5.1. Artificial neural network models hyperplane with a maximum margin. The SVM has been applied in a
ANN is a popular data-driven method based on an interconnected
structure of neurons. Depending on the structure and technique, ANN is Table 5
classified into feedforward NN (e.g., single layer perception and multi- Parameters of data-driven methods.
layer perception) and feedback NN (e.g., recurrent NN and Kohonen’s
BPNN learning rate (η) 0.6 [42]
self-organizing map) [38]. The term “BPNN” represents a multi-layer Target error 10− 4 [43]
feedforward network trained according to error back-propagation [39, Transfer functions of the hidden Tangent sigmoid function [18]
40]. BPNN is frequently used to predict IAQ, due to its capability to layer
address non-linearly separable data [18,41]. A BPNN structure is made Transfer functions of the output layer Pure sigmoid function [18]
Hidden layer number 2 (by repeated testing)
of three kinds of layers: input, hidden and output, with each kind of
Neuron number of the first layer 4 (by repeated testing)
layer having a number of neurons. The input layer is the initial infor­ Neuron number of the second layer 20 (by repeated testing)
mation provided to the system, and the output layer is the expected Maximum epoch 500 [44]
target that the neural network should simulate, i.e., air age for the GABPNN Population size 50 [45]
present study. The hidden layer receives and transmits the data between Mutation rate 0.01 [45]
input and output layers. BP learning algorithm updates weights based on Crossover rate 0.6 [45]
the error between model output and desired output. This process repeats Maximum generation 100 [45]

and stops when it reaches a specified maximum epoch or satisfies other SVM Method ε-support vector regression
stopping criteria. We used BPNN with the Levenberg-Marquardt BP [46]

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X. Tian et al.
large variety of regression problems, including air quality problems
[48]. The detailed mechanism for SVM regression is illustrated in a
previous paper [46]. We use the Matlab library LibSVM [49] to imple­
ment one type of SVM regression, i.e., ε-support vector regression [46].
Two functions, svmtrain and svmpredict, are applied for training and
testing, respectively. We incorporate vsteady , Tsteady , Δv and ΔT as
candidate input features. Both the training and test data are scaled
within the range [0, 1]. The SVM prediction steps based on the LibSVM
toolbox are presented in Fig. 7. At first, the training dataset is used with
the function svmtrain. The input features are mapped to the corre­
sponding air age results, then the svmtrain function adjusts and obtains
the best values of the essential parameters (i.e., C, γ, ε). The prediction
function, svmpredict, then uses the best values of the parameters to
predict the air age based on the test data. As a popular kernel function
choice, Gaussian Radial Basis Function (RBF) is applied, which can be
used when the number of features is relatively small and the relationship
between the features and the target results (i.e., air age for this study) is
nonlinear [50].
3. Results
3.1. Prediction performances with different models
3.1.1. Prediction accuracy with different models
In this section, the performances of the 1st input feature set (i.e.,
vsteady and Tsteady ) and the 2nd input feature set (i.e., vsteady , Tsteady , Δv and
ΔT) are compared to find the better set. The data size is 540, including
540 points evenly distributed along the heights between 0.1 and 2 m, on
Sampling Lines 1–12. The ratio of the number of data in the training set
to that of the test set is maintained at 7:3 throughout this study [36]. The
sets are randomly mixed before picking the trained ones and the tested
ones for each Matlab simulation [18]. Each model is trained and tested
ten times. Fig. 8 (a) shows that, for Case C-1, the averaged MAE/RM­
SE/R2/MAPE values of the 2nd feature set are always higher than the 1st
feature set by 24–33 s/21–36 s/0.22–0.44/2.8%–3.7%, respectively.
Fig. 8 (b) shows that, for Case H-1, the averaged MAE/RMSE/R2/MAPE
values of the 2nd feature set are always higher than the 1st feature set by
19 s/9–29 s/0.04–0.12/2.0%–2.2%, respectively. These observations
illustrate that the 2nd feature set brings a higher prediction accuracy,
compared with the 1st feature set. In addition, we have compared the
prediction performances of different data-driven methods. The averaged
R2 values of the SVM models are significantly higher than the ANN
models (Paired sample t-test, p < 0.05). In comparison, the averaged
MAE/RMSE/MAPE values of the SVM models are significantly lower
than the ANN models (Paired sample t-test, p < 0.05), indicating a more
accurate prediction performance of the SVM model.
3.1.2. Computation time with different models
Fig. 9 presents the computation time with different models for a
single Matlab simulation. The CPU type of the computer running the
simulations is Intel (R) Core (TM) i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20 GHz. The oper­
ating system is Windows 10. The results are made based on the total data
Fig. 7. SVM prediction steps based on LibSVM toolbox.
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Building and Environment 219 (2022) 109171
size of 540. For BPNN-1 and BPNN-2, both models take less than 10 s to
simulate. GABPNN-1 and GABPNN-2 take 362–443 s to complete the
simulation, while SVM-1 and SVM-2 take 72–119 s. The computation
time required by BPNN is much less than that of the other two models.
GABPNN models take three times as long as SVM models.
3.2. Prediction accuracy with different cases
Table 6 presents the comparison of the prediction errors between
cases. Cases C-1, C-2 and C-3 are distinguished in the time lengths of a
complete cycle. With SVM-2, the prediction accuracy of Case C-1 is
slightly higher than Case C-2, while that of Case C-3 is lower than C-2.
The prediction performances between Cases C-1 and C-2 are small, with
the deviation of 1 s/1 s/0.01/0.1% (i.e., MAE/RMSE/R2/MAPE). The
prediction accuracy of Case C-2 is as high as 20 s/48 s/0.83/2.3% (i.e.,
MAE/RMSE/R2/MAPE). Cases C-1, C-4 and C-5 are differentiated in
airflow rate and supply air velocity (see Table 4). With SVM-2, the
largest error deviations among the three cases are 14 s/35 s (i.e., MAE/
RMSE). The R2 and MAPE values among Cases H-1, H-2 and H-3 are
close, with the largest deviation of 0.6%/0.06 (i.e., MAPE/R2). For Cases
H-1, H-2 and H-3, with SVM-2, the largest error deviations among the
three cases are 23 s/40 s (i.e., MAE/RMSE). The R2 and MAPE values
among Cases H-1, H-2 and H-3 are close, with the largest deviation of
1.5%/0.07 (i.e., MAPE/R2).
The first common observation is that the SVM-2 model predicts the
air age with acceptable accuracy for all the cases. All MAPE values are
lower than 3.2%, and the R2 values are distributed between 0.73 and
0.97. The second common observation is that the performances of the
SVM-2 prediction are more accurate than that of the SVM-1, with the
improvement of up to 65 s/80 s/0.50/5.7% (i.e., MAE/RMSE/R2/
MAPE). Adding the Δv and ΔT improves the performance in air age
prediction. This is valid for both heating and cooling.
3.3. Prediction accuracy with different data sizes
As suggested by Kim et al. [51], data-driven models will be updated
when new data arrives. Fig. 10 shows the prediction errors with the
SVM-2 model varying with the data size. The curves show that predic­
tion power can be improved by enlarging the total data size. In Fig. 10
(a) and (b), the performance of 42 s/75 s/0.61/4.7% (i.e., MAE/RM­
SE/R2/MAPE) is achieved after 180 data points. In Fig. 10 (c) and (d),
for Case H-1, the performance of 41 s/64 s/0.74/4.7% (i.e., MAE/RM­
SE/R2/MAPE) is achieved after 130 data points. However, obtaining a
dataset of over 180 data points takes time and effort. The increase in
data size results in an increment of computation time.
3.4. Further investigation into small data sizes
IAQ datasets at different locations are typically smaller and some­
times more diverse compared with those of the other parameters,
especially when the data is collected through field measurements or
monitoring. Therefore, this study aims to test the possibility of estab
X. Tian et al.
Fig. 8. Prediction errors of air age with different models
(Note: the postfix of 1 following the model name means the 1st input feature set composed of vsteady and Tsteady , and 2 means the 2nd input feature set composed of
vsteady , Tsteady , Δv and ΔT).
Fig. 9. Computation time with different models.
lishing rules for accurate prediction with small data sizes. A previous
study investigating the indoor environment shows that the models
generally converge when the data size reaches around 60 [51]. Thus, we
choose the total data size of 60 to study the prediction accuracy further.
As the data size decreases, the data selection method is important to
ensure an acceptable accuracy. We apply two data selection methods, i.
e., select randomly and select the data with a similar Tsteady . To select the
data with a similar Tsteady is based on the following considerations. With
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Building and Environment 219 (2022) 109171
mixing ventilation, the intention is to create an environment where the
Tsteady is uniformly distributed. Though perfect mixing is hard to reach in
reality, the Tsteady in large part of the room fluctuates around an average
value, depending on the room geometry, layout, the supply air condi­
tions, etc. Compared with Tsteady , the deviations of vsteady values at
different locations are higher, and more stochastic. Choosing a dataset
with a similar Tsteady value (i.e., |max − min| < 1 ◦ C) can happen in en­
gineering practice [52]. Further, it better proves the effectiveness of the
ΔT and Δv for the τsteady prediction, as the Tsteady data are basically
invalid.
Each data set which contains 60 data points is selected ten times from
the 540 data points, and the data-driven model establishment process is
repeated ten times. Each result shown in Fig. 11 is the averaged one of
100 Matlab simulations. In Fig. 11, three data sets are applied, including
two data selection methods and two prediction models. It is previously
known in Section 3.1 that the ΔT and Δv are effective inputs. In order to
pursue the simplicity of inputs, the prediction model SVM-3 is tested,
which only contains ΔT and Δv as inputs. The results under Cases C-1
and H-1 are presented as examples of cooling and heating conditions.
For Case C-1, when the data points are randomly selected (i.e., Data Set
1), the prediction errors are large, with the averaged MAE/RMSE/R2/
MAPE values of 58 s/88 s/0.36/6.8%. With Data Sets 2 and 3, the pre­
diction accuracy is improved. Similarly, with Case H-1, the prediction
performances of Data sets 2 and 3 are better than Data set 1. For all the
cases in Table 4, the improvements of the averaged MAE/RMSE/R2/
MAPE values by Data set 2 over Data set 1 are 25–77 s/28–94 s/
0.14–0.53/2.9–7.3%, and the improvements by Data set 2 over Data set
3 are 1–26 s/2–46 s/0.04–0.44/0.1–2.1%. Fig. 11 (e) and (f) present the
prediction errors of τsteady with 8 cases listed in Table 4, operated with
Data Set 2. For cooling, the most accurate performance appears under
X. Tian et al. Building and Environment 219 (2022) 109171

Table 6
Prediction accuracy with different cases.
SVM-1 SVM-2
2
Case MAE (s) RMSE (s) MAPE (%) R MAE (s) RMSE (s) MAPE (%) R2

C-1 54 ± 3 88 ± 3 6.1 ± 0.3 0.47 ± 0.07 21 ± 2 47 ± 6 2.4 ± 0.4 0.84 ± 0.05

C-2 20 ± 2 48 ± 7 2.3 ± 0.3 0.83 ± 0.05
C-3 27 ± 6 57 ± 12 3.2 ± 0.7 0.73 ± 0.14
C-4 37 ±3 57 ± 4 7.3 ± 0.5 0.37 ± 0.08 10 ± 1 25 ± 2 1.8 ± 0.3 0.87 ± 0.02
C-5 89 ±8 140 ± 11 7.6 ± 0.7 0.43 ± 0.11 24 ± 6 60 ± 13 1.9 ± 0.5 0.90 ± 0.04
H-1 27 ±3 48 ± 4 3.1 ± 0.3 0.86 ± 0.02 8±2 19 ± 6 0.9 ± 0.2 0.97 ± 0.01
H-2 20 ±2 35 ± 2 3.7 ± 0.3 0.79 ± 0.03 6±1 16 ± 4 1.2 ± 0.2 0.95 ± 0.02
H-3 43 ±3 72 ± 6 3.5 ± 0.3 0.84 ± 0.03 29 ± 6 56 ± 12 2.4 ± 0.5 0.90 ± 0.04

Fig. 10. Prediction accuracy with different data sizes.

Case C-4, with the averaged MAE/RMSE/R2/MAPE values of 16 s/28 s/
0.72/3.1%. For heating, the prediction errors are small, which are
distributed within 5–12 s (MAE)/9–23 s (RMSE)/0.6%–1.0% (MAPE),
and the R2 values are higher than 0.88. Overall, the MAPE values are all
lower than 5%, showing a sufficient accuracy of Data Set 2.
Generally, Data Set 2 has the highest prediction accuracy for both
cooling and heating, followed by Data Set 3, and then Data Set 1, indi­
cating that the data selection method exerts a larger impact compared
with the model selection.
4. Discussion
4.1. Data-driven model selection
From Fig. 8, the SVM model has improved the generalization per­
formance of the ANN models. Different from the ANN models, the SVM
model seeks to minimize an upper bound of the generalization error,
rather than minimize training error [53]. SVM models can overcome the
inherent drawbacks of ANN models, such as over-fitting training, local
minima and poor generalization performance in cases with large initial
data, leading to a better generation capability, global optimization, and
dimensional independence [53]. However, a previous study shows that
ANN is more robust to noise than SVM [54]. With the data set with
sufficient data size and linear relationships between variables, the ANN
model can also perform precise and quick prediction of IAQ compared
with the SVM model [55]. Clearly, the data characteristics of the present
study are more compatible with the SVM model.
Although the BP model consumes the least computation time, its
accuracy is lower than the SVM model (see Figs. 8 and 9). The GABPNN
models spend threefold of the time of the SVM models, yet bring no
improvement in prediction accuracy. The long computation time of the
GABPNN is expected, as the population evolves over generations to
obtain the optimal solution, i.e., the optimal initial weights for the
present study [47]. According to Wang et al. [56], prediction accuracy

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X. Tian et al. Building and Environment 219 (2022) 109171

Fig. 11. Prediction errors with different data sets and cases.

should be given priority when solving such problems. Overall, the
computation time of the SVM models is acceptable. The data-driven
model selection should be considered with the data set characteristics
(e.g., data size, linear or non-linear relationships, data distribution) and
the computation time.
4.2. Significance of ΔT and Δv
From that can be observed in Fig. 8 and Table 6, adding the infor­
mation of the Δv and ΔT based on the vsteady and Tsteady as inputs im­
proves the prediction accuracy, which is applicable to both cooling and
heating. It can be inferred that, the Δv and ΔT are related to the air
freshness of the specific location in the room. This is because that, the Δv
and ΔT reflect the impact of the air supply condition variation on the air
distribution at a specific location. In other words, larger Δv and ΔT
values imply that the air distribution responds more quickly to the
changes in supply air conditions. It is thus understandable that the fresh
air arrives faster to this location, resulting in a smaller τsteady . According
to Pearson coefficient tests [25], the ΔT negatively correlates with the
τsteady (p < 0.01, data size = 540), validating our explanation. However,
the relationship may be weaker with a smaller data size or other data
selection methods as the Δv and ΔT are also influenced by the heat
source distributions.
Previous studies have observed the existence of stagnant zones in
indoor environments, especially under mixing ventilation, where the
fresh air is hard to reach. The pollutant concentration will be especially
high in the stagnant zones [7], and the particles in the stagnant zones are
difficult to be ventilated out of the room [8]. However, the low air ve­
locity and/or the air temperature more deviates from the supply air
temperature should not be sufficient conditions to judge if it is a stag­
nant zone. Firstly, the heat sources are not evenly distributed in the
room. Secondly, the buoyancy effect should be taken into consideration.
The most reliable way is to visualize the airflow field. It is rather costly
for application to calculate the air distribution in the whole room with
either the experimental method using tracer gas, or the CFD method.
This study illustrates that the Δv and ΔT are useful information to reflect

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X. Tian et al.
the air freshness, thus the IAQ. More importantly, they can be easily and
fast obtained by monitoring the air velocity and temperature for 10–20
min, as illustrated in Section 3.2. This finding helps identify the zones
that are unsuitable for occupants to stay.
4.3. Comparison between cases
The comparison between cases is developed in three ways, i.e., the
comparison between heating and cooling, the influence of the time
length of a cycle, and the influence of airflow rate.
From Table 6, the 2nd feature set (i.e., vsteady , Tsteady , Δv and ΔT)
predicts the τsteady with R2 values up to 0.97, indicating a close rela­
tionship between the air distribution and τsteady for both heating and
cooling conditions. Fig. 9 also shows that the computation times for
heating and cooling are very close, with a deviation of less than 10%.
The mechanism of mixing ventilation is mixing indoor air with fresh air
while exhausting indoor air in both summer and winter [10]. The pre­
diction accuracy under heating is slightly better than that under cooling,
with the R2 increase of up to 0.13 with the same airflow rate using
SVM-2 (see Table 6). This is because achieving good mixing under
heating is more difficult than under cooling [10], as validated by a better
prediction performance of heating cases over cooling cases, with the
SVM-1 model. Overall, the SVM-2 model can be applied to predict the
τsteady under both heating and cooling with sufficient accuracy.
In Table 6, the prediction accuracy of Case C-1 is slightly higher than
Case C-2, while that of Case C-3 is lower than C-2. This is because the air
temperature and velocity variations with a longer time length of a
complete cycle are generally larger, providing more information on the
airflow motion, as well as providing a more divided dataset for the
model. Further, with a longer time length of a complete cycle, the in­
fluence brought by the lag time from air supply condition change to the
indoor air distribution change is decreased [27]. Therefore, a longer
time length results in more accurate prediction performance. However,
the prediction performances between Cases C-1 and C-2 are small, with
the deviation of 1 s/1 s/0.01/0.1% (i.e., MAE/RMSE/R2/MAPE) with
SVM-2. It demonstrates that, when the time length of a complete cycle
increases to a certain point, further improvement by increasing the time
length of a complete cycle is limited. This is because the prediction ac­
curacy is not dependent solely on the Δv and ΔT values. Still, the pre­
diction accuracy of Case C-2 is 20 s/48 s/0.83/2.3% (i.e.,
MAE/RMSE/R2/MAPE) with SVM-2, indicating that a time length of
600 s is sufficient for such predictions.
Table 6 shows that, the MAPE and R2 values among Cases C-1, C-4
and C-5 are close to each other, with the maximum deviation of 0.6%
and 0.06. However, for MAE and RMSE, the values of Case C-5 are
higher than Case C-1, followed by Case C-4. This is due to the different
air age values and ranges with different air change rates. A higher
airflow rate results in a smaller τsteady value [10]. Therefore, even with a
similar MAPE/R2 value, the case with a higher airflow rate performs a
lower MAE/RMSE value. For heating, the airflow rate of Case H-3 is
lower than the other two cases, leading to higher τsteady values and higher
MAE/RMSE values. With SVM-2, the largest error deviations among the
three cases are 23 s/40 s (i.e., MAE/RMSE). The R2 and MAPE values
among Cases H-1, H-2 and H-3 are all higher than 0.90 and lower than
2.5%, respectively. Therefore, a higher airflow rate results in lower
MAE/RMSE values, but exerts an insignificant influence on the MAPE
and R2 values. The developed SVM-2 model thus can predict τsteady
regardless of different airflow rates.
4.4. Data selection
The data selection refers to two aspects for the present study, i.e., the
data size and data selection method. Fig. 10 illustrates that the predic­
tion power is improved by enlarging the total data size, with a fixed ratio
of training data to test data. We use the MAPE value of 5% as the
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Building and Environment 219 (2022) 109171
acceptance threshold, which is stricter than about 20% and 10% in
previous studies [36,57]. With a random selection from 540 data points,
the data size of 180 meets the threshold standard for both heating and
cooling (see Fig. 10). However, with data selection according to certain
rules, the data size of 60 also meets the threshold standard (see Fig. 11).
In Section 3.4, for both cooling and heating, Data Set 2 has the highest
prediction accuracy, followed by Data Set 3, and then Data Set 1, indi­
cating that the data selection method exerts a larger impact compared
with the data-driven model selection. For the present study, it is found
that the data sets of the similar Tsteady (|max − min| < 1 ◦ C) better reflect
the relationships between the ΔT and Δv, and the τsteady .
4.5. Limitations and further study
Above all, this study is very primary, and the aims are to identify the
effective inputs and the model with a relatively accurate prediction
performance. It should be noted that, the proposed strategy may be
applied to stratified environments accompanied by over-qualifying
problems. The advanced ventilation methods, including displacement
ventilation [4], stratum ventilation [5], impinging jet ventilation [6],
etc., are proved to be more energy-efficient than mixing ventilation.
Further, the IAQ predictions are easier with simpler algorithms and
fewer inputs, as illustrated in the Introduction. However, there are a
massive number of existing buildings installed with mixing ventilation,
as well as scenarios where advanced ventilation methods are inappli­
cable due to room features. Vigorous effective IAQ control may make the
ventilation performance of mixing ventilation closer to those of
advanced ventilation methods.
Fig. 12 shows the application of the proposed model to practical use
in indoor environment monitoring. At the beginning of the process, the
measurements of τsteady , vsteady , Tsteady , ΔT and Δv are needed as the
training data to establish the model. The problem is that the measure­
ments of τsteady at dozens of points are rather costly. The alternative and
the prospect are to use the pollutant concentration to replace the τsteady ,
as the pollutant concentration can be read in real time. As the τsteady and
the pollutant concentration have a close relationship [58], we are
confident about the success of using vsteady , Tsteady , ΔT and Δv to predict
the non-uniformly distributed pollutant concentration. In that case, the
pollutant characteristics are needed, which may be used as inputs.
Because of the limitless possibilities of the pollutant characteristics, the
hyperparameters of the algorithms may be revised to adapt to more
inputs.
Another limitation is that we only consider the heating and cooling
conditions while neglecting transition seasons/isothermal air supply.
The influence factors of the non-uniform air distribution mainly include
the heat transfer and indoor partitions. Studies have pointed out that the
non-uniformity of air distribution is reduced with low heat/cooling
loads [10,59]. The parameters of Tsteady and ΔT are also invalid facing
the isothermal air supply. Therefore, the prediction accuracies are
deduced to decline in the heat transfer aspects. As for the complex in­
door partitions, the vsteady and Δv are still effective. Furthermore, a
perfect mixing condition may not need to solve non-uniformity in the
first place. We only compare three data-driven methods, i.e., BPNN,
GABPNN and SVM. There may be a better method with higher accuracy
companied by acceptable computation time. Further studies can be
conducted to explore the performances among different data-driven
methods, especially those that do not belong to ANNs [37].
Currently, we are focusing on the IAQ distribution in a single room,
but the results of this study may potentially be applied to other occasions
as well. For example, in a building with multiple rooms applying vari­
able air volume systems, monitoring the steady state temperature is
difficult to determine the IAQ levels between different rooms. The in­
formation of ΔT and Δv may help determine the rate at which fresh air
arrives. An obstacle to practical application is that data-driven models
require a certain quantity of data. Even a small data size of 60 in Section
X. Tian et al.
Fig. 12. Conceptual plan for further research.
3.4 is difficult to achieve for small-scale rooms/buildings. Solutions for
this include 1) discovering more effective input data, 2) developing
mechanistic models or grey models and 3) relaxing the restrictions for
accuracy. The locations, humidity and radiation may be effective inputs
for air quality [20,48,51]. Grey models to predict dynamic variations
using supply air conditions are also developed [27]. Further studies
should be conducted on the relevant issues.
5. Conclusions
The main conclusions are drawn as follows:
1. SVM models perform better than the BPNN and GABPNN models
when predicting the τsteady , improving up to 27 s/28 s/0.37/3.2%
(MAE/RMSE/R2/MAPE) for cooling and 15 s/42 s/0.21/1.9%
(MAE/RMSE/R2/MAPE) for heating. The computation time of SVM
is medium compared with BPNN and GABPNN models.
2. The ΔT and Δv with a pulsating air supply significantly improve the
prediction accuracy of τsteady , based on the Tsteady and vsteady , with the
improvement of up to 65 s/80 s/0.50/5.7% (i.e., MAE/RMSE/R2/
MAPE), indicating that the ΔT and Δv are related to the air freshness
at a specific point in the room, for both heating and cooling.
3. The prediction accuracy with heating is slightly better than that with
cooling, as achieving good mixing under heating is more difficult
than that under cooling.
4. A 10-min pulsating air supply cycle is adequate to collect the ΔT and
Δv for the studied multi-occupant office, with the R2 value higher
than 0.80.
5. A higher airflow rate results in lower MAE/RMSE values but an
insignificant impact on the MAPE/R2 values. The developed SVM-2
model can predict τsteady regardless of different airflow rates, with a
sufficient accuracy.
6. When the data points have a similar Tsteady , the SVM-2 model can still
determine the τsteady of small data size (i.e., 60) with a sufficient ac­
curacy, adding the evidence that the ΔT and Δv help reveal the
inapparent difference in IAQ, and approaching engineering
applications.
We primarily identify the effective inputs and the model with a
relatively accurate prediction performance. Further studies can be
conducted to 1) explore the performances among other data-driven
methods, 2) investigate the pollutant concentration combined with the
pollutant characteristics, 3) apply the research approach to a building
14
Building and Environment 219 (2022) 109171
with multiple rooms and 4) further decrease data size.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Xue Tian: Writing – original draft, Conceptualization. Yuchun
Zhang: Investigation. Zhang Lin: Writing – review & editing, Supervi­
sion, Funding acquisition.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The work described in this paper is supported by General Research
Grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region, China (Project No. CityU 11208220).
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