English

It is obvious that a building permanently exchanges with its nearby environment (mainly light, heat, sound, visual accessibility); these interactions are numerous and complex enough to require serious means of investigation, more especially as the requests of the new regulations and those of the users become increasingly demanding.

This paper demonstrates a simple and practical simulation-based approach for fast identification of appropriate building design strategies at the early stage of a design project. A simplified passive solar house was modeled using an integrated building energy and CFD simulation to examine the feasibility of different sustainable thermal strategies for use in the 2007 Solar Decathlon Competition. The home was modeled in EnergyPlus, and then the surface temperatures at times of interest were used as boundary conditions for CFD modeling in PHOENICS.

This paper presents the features of Eco-Bat, a computer program developed to assess the environmental impacts of buildings, including construction materials and energy consumed, during its life cycle. The methodology used to evaluate environmental impacts based on a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, compatible with ISO 14040 standards, is detailed. The data are mainly extracted from Ecoinvent (Anon A). Two applications are presented to illustrate the possibilities offered by Eco-Bat.

Residential buildings are characterized by being envelope-load dominated buildings, hence are greatly influenced by the outside climatic conditions. Due to the harsh climate of Saudi Arabia, residential buildings on average, consume  more than half of the total consumed energy. The bulk of this energy is consumed by the airconditioning system which is required to remove substantial amount of gained heat due to poor thermal envelope performance. Implementing proper envelope thermal characteristics for residential buildings can significantly reduce energy consumption.

Fires in buildings account for 60% of fires in Taiwan. Since establishment of the National Fire Agency in  1995, many fire codes have been promulgated resulting in a gradual decline in the number of casualties of fire. However, for old apartments in urban areas, although regulations aimed at improving fire-prevention refuge facilities and fire-fighting equipment of existing building have been announced, they cannot be implemented efficiently due to the lack of public acceptance. This investigation has found that hundreds of thousands people live in such buildings.

This paper presents a set of solutions to enable  differential time scales for dynamic boundary conditions within whole-building energy simulation, specifically occupant behavioral adaptations in response to short-term changes in solar and daylighting conditions. The concept is to allow specialized libraries to determine in tandem the state of critical variables, such as window blinds and lighting systems, at higher frequencies than the building domain time step (e.g.

The following paper is focused on hygrothermal behaviour of roofs with ventilated air layers subjected to air leakages in their internal decks (the internal partial construction located below the ventilated air layer). Possibilities of CFD modelling of such constructions are discussed in the first part of the paper including the problem of introduction of water vapour diffusion into calculation. A brief comparison of results from CFD analysis and from calculation based on a technical standard is also included.

The use of a thermal probe allows a range of in-situ conditions to be taken into account that impact upon the properties of building materials (λ, α) as encountered in reality. In this study, the transient thermal simulation of a model representing a line source in an infinite material sample has been used to guide the development of an experimental thermal probe apparatus. Simulation produced a series of datasets that have been used to test the data analysis routines used with the experimental probe.

The simulation of building efficiency and cost is a crucial driver to contemporary building design today. This paper presents the development of a software tool to simulate the lifecycle costs of building construction and maintenance. It is a part of the nD modelling tool development and also based on the overall system architecture of the nD modelling tool. nD modelling aims to integrate a number of design dimensions into a holistic model, which would enable users to portray and visually project the building design over its complete lifecycle.

Dynamic facility state models could effectively support simulation-based building systems control. In a simulation-based control strategy, the permutation space of control options (alternative states of control devices) at a future time step is proactively explored using computational simulation. The simulated implications of alternative control options are then compared based on users' preferences. From this comparison, the preferable control actions can be deduced.