Recent studies have emphasized the importance of the interzone air movement in a building and demonstrated the need for better understanding of this movement in any attempt to predict the ventilation efficiency or thermal performance of the building.

This paper discusses the use of the k-e two-equation turbulence model to simulate natural convection of high Rayleigh number in a partitioned enclosure for a few cases. The airflow in all cases is considered to be threedimensional owing to the asymmetry of the room configuration. The predictions of the model are compared to available experimental and theoretical results; good agreement is obtained. The study also discusses the effect of door height and location on the pattern of airflow and temperature. Results indicate that the flow pattern is quite sensitive to the variations of door height and location, while the convective heat transfer rate is only sensitive to variation of door height.