Air quality, temperature variations and humidity must be controlled in historical buildings in order to avoid hazards for cultural property and in some cases also for operators and visitors. Too many variations of any of these three parameters over time, can easily accelerate the aging process of the building materials as well as rare objects and artefacts. In cultural heritage, related indoor microclimatic condition control is fundamental for appropriate preventive conservation measures. A transient simulation model, for coupled heat and mass-moisture transfer, taking into account archivist and general public movements, combined with the related sensible and latent heat released to the ambient, is provided. The proposed method is based on the indirect approach to the numerical simulation of solid object movements in a fluid combined with heat, moisture flow phenomena and multi-physical conditions. Our method can be a useful tool for the evaluation of: indoor environment and air quality, that play an important role in guaranteeing that the building provide optimal conditions with regard to the appropriate use classifications (in historical buildings conservation of artworks plays a major role); the best compromise between people working and visitor comfort and temperature, relative humidity, presence of gases and/or permitted concentration levels for conservation and maintenance of works of art; conditioning and ventilation plant solutions; compliance with regulations and standards ensuring that all the refurbishment actions must comply with national and international indications for historical buildings (in particular museums, libraries, archives, rare book and manuscript collections etc.) protection and preventive conservation of works of art in them. Transient simulation results obtained are in good agreement with the experimental data collected through a monitoring campaign on microclimatic conditions inside the 18th century Palatina Library in Parma (Italy) i.e. our case study.

Surgical site infections (SSIs) are the second to third most common site of health care associated infections (HAIs). It is very important to maintain good indoor air quality (IAQ) and the best ventilation system in the operating theatre (OT) to ensure health and safety for the patient and surgical team, also to reduce the risk of post-operative wound infection. Then a significant consideration in OTs is the control of aerosols, anesthesia gases and smoke. The present paper uses the airflow modeling based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to study the indoor climate of a standard ISO5 class OT with an ultraclean air filter system and a total ceiling unidirectional diffuser. The OT has a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) plant with a laminar airflow (LAF) or ultraclean ventilation. A simple method to analyze the effects of different sliding door conditions combined with crossing persons and persons with a stretcher crossing, on the OT climate, airflow patterns and the indoor pressures scheme, is provided. The proposed simulation method, that belongs to the indirect approach for a numerical simulation of solid object movements in a fluid, provides important knowledge on complex flow phenomena combined with multi-physical conditions. Results obtained by transient simulation show disruptions of the airflow inside the OT and different airflow displacement and distribution caused by surgery staff movements and sliding door opening and closing, but in particular static pressure changes in the HVAC plant system with important effects on ventilation system working conditions and its energy performances.

The paper deals with a numerical multi-physical investigation on performance assured by different ventilating systems in supplying air quality and comfort conditions in a movie theatre hall. Mixing air distribution, under floor displacement and personalized air distribution systems are outlined in a given geometry. Momentum, energy and mass conservation equations are solved in order to highlight velocity fields, temperature distributions and carbon dioxide levels in each condition. Effectiveness of ventilation and mean age of air supplied to spectators are also computed giving further evaluation parameters in order to strike a balance between strong and weak points characterizing the studied systems.