The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, (NCIIA), renamed VentureWell, has awarded a grant to the Illinois Institute of Technology to study an efficient method to detect air leakage spots in tall buildings using a compact acoustic phased array.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat’s research team supported the application, which focuses on one of the key energy conservation issues facing tall buildings. It is estimated that 30 to 50 percent of space conditioning energy consumption in many well-insulated buildings is due to air leakage through the building enclosure.

“The unique and innovative aspect of this project is the development of a new measurement technique to detect air-infiltration in old and new tall buildings in conjunction with traditional techniques” said Dr. Payam Bahrami, CTBUH Senior Research Associate.