buildings

In the standard design process of a building, total building simulation using building simulation software is encouraged to be incorporated into the design process as early as possible. However, this paper demonstrates that building simulation can be used as late in the process as the early construction phase of a building project, though usually with increasing cost of building modifications.

The authors have developed a tool called SimSPARK able to automatically build dynamic zonal simulations of a building zone. In that study, SimSPARK architecture is described in details along with the current zonal model library. The applicability of this tool is also illustrated with the comparison of their zonal model in a ventilated room composed of 27 zones, with others models that don't include adsorption and desorption processes.

Several thermal building simulators also allow coupled modeling of bulk air movements using airflow network models.However, solving the combined flow and thermal problem can be problematic, both in the context of traditional building simulators and for modern environments, where both airflow and thermal models are formulated as sets of differential-algebraic equations (DAE). For variable-time-step DAE-basedsimulators, difficult coupled problems often lead to small time steps and slow simulations.

This paper presents the objectives and results of the initial stage of an ongoing research project on coupling of building energy simulation (BES), airflow network (AFN), and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) programs. The objective of the research underlying this paper is to develop and verify a prototype cooperative BES, AFN, and CFD design environment for optimization of building energy performance and indoor environment.

Describes what could be the requirements of a European standard (not yet numbered) prepared by Technical Committee 156 (Working Group 7) of CEN (European Standardization Committee) about the calculation of energy requirements for buildings with room conditioning systems.

The article presents the scope and content of ISO 13790 standard which is intended to calculate the energy use for space heating of buildings. Information is given about the accuracy of the standard calculation method.

The indoor environment is by far the most important environment from a health perspective. Allergies, airways infections, lung cancer etc. are associated with indoor air quality (IAQ) in developed countries and they are related to the use of energy for buildings. The main problems related to buildings, energy conservation and health in the developed world concern 'dampness' and inadequate ventilation. It is well established that if there is no 'building dampness' and if the ventilation is adequate then the risk of IAQ-related diseases is low.

A field study of the thermal comfort of workers in natural ventilated office buildings in Oxford and Aberdeen, UK, was carried out which included information about use of building controls. The data were analysed to explore that what effect the outdoor temperature has on the indoor temperature and how this is affected by occupants' use of environmental controls during the peak summer (June-August). The proportion of subjects using a control was related to indoor and outdoor temperatures to demonstrate the size of the effect.

The main purpose of buildings is to provide a comfortable living environment for their occupants. This includes, among others, thermal,visual and acoustic comfort as well as indoor air quality. Except during the 1950's and 1960's, it has always been considered important that an excess use of energy should be avoided in the construction and the management of a building, sometimes even at the cost of user comfort. Energy saving is, however, not the main purpose of the building.

This work presents a field measurement study, investigating the airtightness of 64 French dwellings less than ten year old. Buildings have been classified according to the type of construction (masonry or timber frame) and of occupancy mode (multi- or single- family). Using a fan-depressurization technique, we assessed the air leakage rate of each dwelling, based on a theoretical flow model that relates the infiltration airflow rate to the differential pressure .