Automatic generation of partitioning and modeling adapted to zonal method

This paper presents the concept of a tool adapted to zonal models and devoted to the simulation of thermal dynamic phenomena in buildings. The aim of this tool is the automatic generation of zonal models requiring the minimum user's expertise. The proposed tool uses a database to deduce the behavior of flows and thermal transfers. This database is composed of qualitative knowledge about elementary flows occurring in the building such as jets, plumes, and boundary layers, and of modeling knowledge ( experimental correlations, numerical or analytic solutions issuing from experiments or existing codes). The tool proposes a space partitioning based on the rules of expertise and respecting boundary conditions, and builds a simplified and suitable model. The main feature of our model lies on the room partitioning based on the airflow pattern and varying over time to follow the evolution of the dynamic flows. The method chosen for the space partitioning is the octree.