English

This paper describes the methods developed to couple a commercial CFD program with a multi-segmented model of human thermal comfort and physiology. A CFD model is able to predict detailed temperatures and velocities of airflow around a human body, whilst a thermal comfort model is able to predict the response of a human to the environment surrounding it.

The UC Berkeley Comfort Model is a helpful simula-tion tool for the assessment of thermal comfort in non-uniform environments. A major element of the model is the implementation of a clothing node, which considers both heat and moisture capacitance of clothing. Heat capacity of the clothing has been demonstrated to be important when considering tran-sient effects. Moisture capacitance is important to correctly model evaporative heat loss from the body through clothing.

In this study, we developed a numerical thermal manikin (NTM) with inner-body thermoregulation functions to investigate the local and overall thermal comfort in non-uniform thermal environments. The effect of interaction between human body and his/her environment was modeled by transferring air condition data from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation into a thermoregulation model, feeding back the body surface temperatures from the inner-body model as boundary conditions to CFD, and then iterating until convergence.

The advent of environmentally driven building regulations, rising energy costs, and heightened client awareness of energy-related issues has increased the demand for the assessment of building integrated low-carbon (LZC) energy supply systems. However, it is seldom the case that any one software tool fulfils the needs for an appraisal of these types of systems. Therefore, there is a clear need for an effective methodology for the use of a range of software tools in LZC technology analysis.

This paper focuses on the environmental impacts assessment module recently implemented in an energy balance tool. It describes the data and the methodology used to evaluate these impacts. It is based on a life cycle approach and includes not only the energy consumption during the operation phase, but also the impacts of the contruction materials, from manufacturing to waste disposal. This tool has been used within the framework of a national projet to perform a life cycle assessment of 20 different buildings located in Switzerland. One of these case studies is presented in this paper. 

This paper presents the results of implementing 14 high-performance measures in a prototypical office building in a hot and humid climate using the DOE-2 simulation program. The objectives of this research were to discover high-performance measures applicable to office buildings in hot and humid climates and to develop a high-performance (maximum energy-efficient) building model that only uses technologies readily available in the contemporary market.

Guidelines for isolation rooms in hospitals require keeping these rooms at negative pressure differential, but the guidelines do not impose a particular ventilation strategy how to achieve this. In principle, one could use variable ventilation regimes responding to interventions that cause a potential contamination risk such as the opening of doors. The variable ventilation regime would temporarily increase the volume offset and hence induce a higher negative pressure differential, whereas during other times the negative pressure differential would be kept at an acceptable minimum.

This paper proposes an approach to the creation of design tools that address the real information needs of designers in the early stages of design of non-residential buildings. Traditional simplified design tools are typically too limited to be of much use, even in conceptual design.

Despite the software developments intended to facilitate the use of energy simulation programs by architects in the early design stage, a very limited guidance is available, leading to a limited uptake. This paper investigates ways to better inform architects about energy simulation, firstly by enabling them to identify and translate the design inquiries into simulation tasks for deriving productive decision support and secondly by familiarizing them with the concepts and processes involved in energy simulation.

This paper describes the modelling and analysis of a 5 MW chilled water plant used for the cooling of a recently constructed data centre in the UK. The model was developed using the TRNSYS software with the aim of studying the impact of perturbations such as chiller failure on the water and air temperatures in the system. The model includes the chillers, hydraulic network (piping, valves and pumps) and individual water-to-air heat exchange units.