English

This paper explores a technique for generating marginal abatement cost curves for individual build-ings. It makes use of sequential optimisation and exhaustive search of building refurbishment options based on a custom building energy model developed previously by the authors.

Thermal renovation of buildings has other consequences than energy savings. In this project, a light framed renovation façade with a low U-value was added on existing heavy building envelop, for enhance its energy performance. Beyond energy saving questions we were interested by the impact of this retrofit solution on entering daylight quantity.  The problem was approached experimentally and numerically.

Today, radiant floor heating systems are generally used for heating indoor environments of residential buildings. Radiant heating is physically comfortable and energy use largely differs compared to convective heating. It is believed that one reason for that is if there is an air flow, there is a difference in surface heat transfer of the human body. The heat transfer coefficient of the human body is an indispensable parameter to evaluate the indoor thermal environment, thermal comfort and heat loads in air-conditioned and ventilated buildings.

A measurement technique was developed on capture efficiency of commercial kitchen ventilation systems affected by disturbance due to HVAC diffusers and movement of kitchen workers. In the process of development, computer simulation using RANS CFD model was applied to evaluate diffusion of gaseous contaminants emitted from commercial kitchen appliances and compared with experiments.

SRC (System of Resistances and Capacitances), is a new building thermal simulation program which uses an RC-Network representation to model the thermal flow among building elements and an H-Network rep-resentation to model the humidity mass flow among building air volumes. Two coupled systems of ODEs are formed based on these representations, which are solved using a forward numerical scheme of varying time step. This systemic approach enables a linear, time varying approximation of building’s thermal be-havior to be realized, allowing state space-based con-trol techniques to be applied.

To holistically understand the influence of inhomo-geneous and dynamic indoor climatic effects on hu-man thermal comfort, it is essential to investigate the appropriate dynamic human thermoregulatory pro-cesses and their complex interdependencies within the body. Although gender and age specific differ-ences in thermal comfort perception are well known, the numerous mathematical model approaches pro-posed in literature, typically consider a standard human being of male gender.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is one of the branches of fluid mechanics that uses numerical meth-ods and algorithms to solve and analyze problems that involve fluid flows. Annual hourly fast flow simula-tions are needed for some applications in building in-dustry, such as the conceptual design of indoor envi-ronment, or coupled with energy simulation to pro-vide deep analysis on the performance of the build-ings. Year round simulation, which consists of 8760(365⇥24) independent hourly simulations, is needed to help the designer investigate the problem clearly.

Biomimicry offers opportunities to advance the development of flexible building facades. Here, the combination of external fur, bioheat transfer (blood perfusion) and internal surface evaporation are combined into a model of a commercial office building façade. Temperatures and heat transfer are calculated in a dynamic simulation for summer conditions in a temperate climate (Melbourne, Australia). Thermal comfort, in terms of PMV and PPD, is assessed and compared to a reference case. 

This paper describes the investigation of a former sports centre in order to establish design guidelines for a refurbishment. We performed dynamic thermal and hygrothermal simulations to determine the preference of interior or exterior insulation .  The results of our investigation were integrated in the programme for a competition held in spring 2013.