Air infiltration through revolving doors

For large public buildings, conventional swing or sliding doors provide openings on the ground floor causing significant amount of energy losses through doorway. The configuration of revolving doors keeps the entrance closed at all times while allowing large number of people to pass through. Therefore, revolving doors are widely used as a solution to reduce the undesired air infiltration caused by the entrance and minimize the energy needs for heating and cooling. A 1/10 reduced-scale model was designed for the laboratory measurements of the air infiltration caused by the movement of revolving doors. The revolving door was installed on a well-insulated airtight box, placed in a climatic chamber in which the winter outdoor conditions were controlled. A heater was installed inside the box to maintain the indoor environment at a constant temperature. Experiments were performed at different rotation speeds of the revolving door. The air infiltration rates due to the door rotation at different indoor-outdoor temperature differences were calculated based on the energy balance equation of the air inside the box. The experimental results were compared with those from very limited previous studies. Correlation-based models of the volumetric air flow rate expressed by the rotation speed and dimensionless temperature indexes around the door were obtained at different seal conditions. The models established on the base of the experimental data provide an easy in prototype. The energy loss due to the rotation of door, based on the new experiments, was also compared with those based on previous data