English

Simulation is often utilised in the regulatory assessment of building performance as in the case of the Australia’s Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS). A recent government discussion paper (SOG-EE, 2012) proposes increased use of simulation as a method for building compliance assessment; however, responses to this document demonstrate a lack of confidence in the accuracy of the approved thermal assessment software used in the Scheme. Through empirical and intermodal comparisons, this paper examines the capacity of the computational engine.

As an important influence factor of unban climate, unban water bodies take positive effect on the micro-climate of surrounding area in summer. This paper firstly evaluated performances of five different models comparing with experimental results of windtunnel to find out which is most suitable for thermal prediction of micro-climate. Then, SKE model was selected to simulate four planning cases considering solar radiation and humidity transportation to predict wind and thermal-humidity environment.

This study is focused on the impact of shading control and thermostat set point control on daylighting metrics, glare evaluation and energy consumption for perimeter office spaces (zones around perimeter). State-of-the-art and new control strategies for roller shades are summarized and their effect is analyzed for spaces with thermal mass in two different climates.

This paper describes the concept of an intelligent zone controller for the efficient operation of environmental systems in buildings. This controller deploys a predictive control methodology with embedded simulation capability. To address the scalability issue in realization of predictive simulation-assisted control systems, we explore the possibility to divide the target building into a number of well-formed sub-domains. Thus, control logic and the associated simulation routines can be distributed and enacted both autonomously and asynchronously.

Traditional energy performance calculated using building simulation with the typical meteorological year (TMY) weather data represents the energy performance in a typical year but not necessarily the average or typical energy performance of a building in long term. Furthermore, the simulated results do not provide the range of variations due to the change of weather, which is important in building energy management and risk assessment of energy efficiency investment.

Many European countries assess the heating and cooling needs of buildings using the quasi-steady state calculation method described in EN ISO 13790. The energy need is calculated by establishing the monthly balance of heat losses and heat gains, and the dynamic effects are taken into consideration by introducing correlation factors. The difficulty of evaluating night-time ventilation with such a method comes from the strong influence of the dynamic effects.

A building life cycle simulation tool has been developed and linked to thermal simulation, allowing energy use and other environmental impacts to be evaluated. Existing building LCA tools are based upon a static method, considering yearly average processes and impacts. A dynamic method has been developed here in order to model the time variation of electricity production and allocate environmental impacts to different uses. Results on a case study show an increase of environmental impacts up to 40% compared to the common static method.

The majority of numerical studies of room airflow using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)  are conducted with the steady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach. In this approach the averaged quantities are computed, and the effect of turbulence is modelled. Furthermore, the standard-gradient diffusion hypothesis is often used to model the turbulent mass transport, which relates the turbulent mass flux to the mean concentration derivative.

ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 140, Standard Method of Test for the Evaluation of Building Energy Analysis Computer Programs applies the IEA BESTEST building thermal fabric test cases and example simulation results originally published in 1995. These software accuracy test cases and their example simulation results, which comprise the first test suite adapted for the initial 2001 version of Standard 140, are approaching their 20th anniversary.