SU and several partners will test a variety of air barrier panels using a specially designed two-story “house” wired to monitor each panel’s performance during the four seasons

Syracuse University announced this week that it and several partners are about to launch a three-year, $2 million study of air barrier systems at a campus laboratory specially designed to analyze and control unintended air flow between outdoors and indoors.

The research team is a big one. In addition to SU faculty and students, the partners include the industry group Air Barrier Association of America, which will install panels of various materials and properties; Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which will analyze data from instruments it installs in the lab to measure temperature, moisture, and air movement; the U.S. Department of Energy; the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority; and the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems, whose mission is to create jobs through its research in environmental and energy technologies.

The laboratory, formally known as the Building Envelope Systems Test Laboratory, resembles a two-story house. (Click here to view a recent report by WSYR-TV.) In place of windows, however, the building features 34 openings for test panels, each 4ft. wide by 9ft. high. Located in an open area on SU’s South Campus, the building gets full exposure to the distinctly seasonal weather common to Central New York. (We’re talking cold winters.)

“This project represents a new approach to doing research, with an industry and government laboratory and a university collaborating together,” Laverne Dalgleish, executive director of the Air Barrier Association of America, told SU’s news service. “This is research that is international in scope and that will be used around the world.”