English

In order to realize “design by simulation” in building design, this paper discusses the methodology of applying building thermal simulation in the building conceptual design stage. The conceptual design stage is divided into four sub-stages and the framework of design by simulation in the conceptual design stage has been built.

With the fast development of urbanization in China, the urban thermal environment has been worsen due to the more and more obvious heat island phenomena. Aartificial waterscape is regarded as one of the most effective methods to improve the outdoor climate. In this paper a fountain model is developped based on experiment results and Particle-Source-In Cell (PSI-CELL) model. Lagrangian approach is adopted to simulate the dynamics properties of droplets in the air while Eulerian approach is employed to solve the conservation equations of the air.

Long-wave radiation heat transfer is calculated using a geometrical factor the so-called view factor, which is normally estimated in a simplified way by building simulation programs, especially when there is no information in the literature due to the complexities to solve the double integral which defines the view factor between two surfaces. Analytical solutions are only available in the literature for a restricted number of simple configurations.

Even in relatively warm area in Japan, frost damage of roof tiles occurs. In this study, the influences of several factors on frost damage are considered from a thermal environmental point of view. Condensation on the external surfaces of roof tiles, which is caused by a temperature drop due to nocturnal radiation, is estimated as one of the most important factors to the frost damage. The frequency of condensation was calculated by a numerical analysis. The influence of the parameters, such as the inclination angle and the orientation of the roof, is investigated.

The properties of transparent plaster covering transparent insulation materials (TIM) were investigated using a whole building simulation program (ESP-r). The outer plaster was made from glass balls of different diameter, glued together with synthetic resin. The transmittance of the whole transparent covering layer (plaster + TIM) was estimated for different solar incident angles by laboratory measurements. The innovative character of the materials required refining of ESP-r’s optical database in order to take into account these new characteristics.

A new set of climatic data for different kinds of calculations has been compiled for various Swiss localities. This includes the generation of new design reference year data sets with hourly values for e.g. building simulations. The procedure conforms to a set of new European standards describing the algorithms. One key element in this is the processing of solar radiation information, especially for the separation into direct and diffuse components. The most advanced methodology was used.

Rainfall simulation is key problem for the evaluation of the energy saving potential of passive cooling by natural rainfall evaporation in humid and hot areas. This paper used a set of monthly, daily and hourly rainfall data in Guangzhou Area to identify the statistic feathers and distribution of the monthly, daily and hourly rainfall. A one-order AR model was found to be suitable for monthly rainfall estimation by AIC criterion judgment. Using a Gamma distribution model and monthly rainfall, daily rainfall was estimated by stochastically assignment.

Rainfall simulation is a key problem for the evaluation of the energy saving potential of passive cooling by natural rainfall evaporation in humid and hot areas. Using a set of data in Guangzhou Area from weather bureau as the training sample, and the data generated by Medpha (Meteorological Data Producer for HVAC Analysis) as the testing sample, distance discriminant analysis was applied to identify the rainy time.

“Energy performance of buildings” estensive international research activities have been carried out on the elaboration and adoption of standards containing common methodologies for building energy performance assessment. One important item concerns the definition of a simplified method for the calculation of energy use for space heating and cooling (ISO/FDIS 13790). A simplified quasi-steady state calculation method is presented in this standard.

Weather prediction is considered to be essential for the predictive control of HVAC systems in which dynamic components, such as a thermal storage tank or heavy building envelope, exist. This paper proposes a method for revising the prior prediction of ambient temperature and humidity by combining two additionally available different data sources, i.e., observations at the building site and forecasts from a weather station.