ASHRAE Design Guide for Air Curtains

Title
ASHRAE Design Guide for Air Curtains

Author
Dr. Liangzhu (Leon) Wang, Associate Professor, Department of Building, Civil and
Environmental Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
leon.wang@concordia.ca 1-514-848-2424 ext. 5766

Co-Authors
David Johnson (Berner), Frank Cuaderno (Mars Air), Brian Jones (Powered Aire), Dahai Qi
(University of Sherbrooke)

Scope
Originally invented by Van Kennel in 1904, air curtains have been widely used for nearly 50 years.
Many building applications include the effective layer of reducing infiltration through building
entrances, the preservation of low temperatures in cold storage rooms and refrigerated food service
merchandizing cases, the blockage of smoke/dust dispersion in buildings and underground
structures, the prevention of flying insects, dusts, winds, cold/warm air, and ambient moisture to
achieve better indoor comfort and air quality in buildings. This design guide is based on the many
years of air curtain research and field engineering experiences of the authors and encompasses the
various key aspects of air curtain designs and applications in buildings. The targeted readers
include air curtain manufacturers (to manufacture, size and control based on building application),
architects, building designers and owners (to select and commission air curtains), and researchers
and educators (to understand the fundamental aerodynamics and energy efficiency of air curtains
for developing more advanced units in the future).

Rationale
An air curtain is unlike a simple air terminal unit, which is mainly for air distribution inside
buildings. The main function of an air curtain is to create a well-engineered airstream to act as a
protective barrier against external forces including winds, thermal effects and solid-phase objects,
such as smoke/dusts/insects, mostly in harsh surrounding environments, for creating acceptable,
comfortable, energy efficient, safe and clean indoor building environment. As a result, the design,
control, sizing, selection, testing and commissioning are all subject to many field application
variables such as air curtain airstream jet supply velocity, angle, external wind velocity/direction,
indoor and outdoor temperature gradient, dimension and size of the openings, and the building
system operations. For both academic research and development, and the engineering applications,
there is a lack of a complete design guide for air curtains to address all these issues.

The book available only may be the “Building Services Research and Information Association
(BSRIA)” at the UK developed a comprehensive guideline, Application Guide 2/97 Air Curtains
– Commercial Applications for the design of air curtains. The design guide is mostly based on
numerical simulations, which are mostly outdated (1997) and cannot reflect the most recent
developments on air curtains by the authors. The Handbook of ASHRAE is probably one of the
authority references for the predictions of infiltrations. However, no information of the amount of
infiltrations or the method to determine infiltrations is provided for air curtains. Limited
information on air curtain operations can be found in the ASHRAE Applications Handbook, which
ASHRAE Design Guide for Air Curtains

is however less detailed than the BSRIA air curtain guide. The handbooks only point out that the
performance of air curtain depends on many factors such as ambient weather conditions, building
pressurization, jet characteristics, and door usage frequencies without further details.
Through many years’ collaborative efforts of the authors, air curtain performance related codes
changes have been revised including International Energy Conservation Codes (IECC)-C402.4.7
Vestibules, ASHRAE Standard 189.1-Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green
Buildings, and ASHRAE/ANSI/IES Standard 90.1-Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-
rise Residential Buildings. This book will also provide technical details and guidelines for
supporting these code/standards changes for proper implementation and practices of these changes
for ASHRAE community.
Contents

1. Air curtain unit background, history, general information

2. Air curtain unit jet theory, infiltration theory, dimensionless theory
3. Air curtain unit simulations and validations
a. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
b. Infiltration simulations (e.g. using CONTAM)
c. Energy simulations (e.g. using EnergyPlus and TRNSYS)
d. Validations
4. Air curtain effectiveness - infiltration, energy performance, minimum requirements, under
wind, with/without heats, door operations, stack effect, building pressure, orientation and
surroundings
5. Air curtain unit certification – aerodynamic performance, sound, AMCA, ISO
6. Air curtain unit design and sizing
a. Air Curtain Unit Type A
i. Air Curtain Device Performance – Velocity, airflow rate, uniformity, velocity
projection
ii. Nozzle - design, depth, angle adjustment
iii. Heating, cooling, filtration, mounting
b. Air Curtain Unit Type B, etc.
i. Air Curtain Device Performance – Velocity, airflow rate, uniformity, velocity
projection
ii. Nozzle - design, depth, angle adjustment
iii. Heating, cooling, filtration, mounting
7. Air curtain unit related standards and codes, testing/commissioning methods
a. Energy – ASHRAE 189.1, ASHRAE 90.1, IECC
b. Safety – UL, CSA, CE
c. Health – ANSI/NSF 37
8. Air curtain unit field practices - field testing, monitoring, installing, commissioning,
controlling, system effects
9. Other applications and special environments –
a. Air curtain insects/dusts control; food industry; environmental controls; recirculating;
revolving doors
b. Specialty functions, parts/equipment drying and debris removal
c. Special environments hazardous, corrosive, clean rooms