English

Architecture practice is on the front line directly applying best-case evidence-based solutions to conserve energy. Conserving resources through energy efficiency rely on energy modeling software to simulate performance, evaluate energy use, and optimize energy savings in building designs. Today’s powerful building performance simulation tools can be leveraged for energy modeling during early design phases. To further reduce building energy consumption, energy simulations done during conceptual design has potential to impact longterm energy use in architecture.

The main objective of this study is to develop a more accurate method to estimate the energy consumption of commercial buildings at the design stage. The study is based on the simplified model presented in the Regulation for Energy Efficiency Labelling of Commercial Buildings in Brazil. The first step was to evaluate the feasibility and relevance of more complex statistical modelling techniques, such as the neural network. The second step of the assessment consisted of applying the Latin Hypercube sampling technique to combine the effects of several input parameters.

Natural ventilation is a cost-effective way to reduce cooling energy for buildings. However, the performance of natural ventilation largely depends on outdoor climate. A good and feasible control strategy is the key to ensure high performance of natural ventilation. Typically, windows are operated by occupants. Therefore, a control strategy that based on human behavior can enhance the performance of natural ventilation. This paper studied four different control strategies that simulate human behavior based on temperature and humidity in a climate with high outdoor humidity.

In this paper, we give an overview of an on-going research work aiming at assessing the benefits that could be drawn from applying advanced software engineering techniques – namely model-driven architecture, component-based approaches and model-based system engineering – to support building life cycle tasks (especially design ones) which entail making use of digital models. 

This article shows the combination of a thermal-airflow simulation program with an energy systems analysis model in order to assess the use of natural ventilation as a method for saving energy within residential buildings in large-scale scenarios. The aim is to show the benefits for utilizing natural airflow instead of active systems such as mechanical ventilation or air-conditioning in buildings where the indoor temperature is over the upper limit of the comfort range.

Indoor air quality and thermal comfort of the passive school buildings should be particularly paid more attentions due to those new passive school buildings adopted highly airtight building envelopes. In this study indoor environment of a very densely occupied classroom with displacement ventilation has been investigated. In order to appropriately model the classroom, all the simulation parameters are based on a typical real classroom structure, its air tightness and infiltration rate were measured.

This paper deals with typical residential buildings constructed according to the national energy-efficiency standard in China’s severe cold region. Dynamic heating/cooling loads of residential building models were simulated via a factorial experiment. The electricity consumption of residential buildings was investigated, and the characteristics of the power load were analyzed statistically. The results show the cooling/heating/power load indexes of S–N- and E–W-oriented multi-story residential buildings in China’s severe cold region.