English

Objective of this study is to evaluate the cooling potential of buried pipes and a derivative thereof, for buildings situated in Brazilian climate. In a first step, the cooling potential of these techniques is characterized independently of any building dynamic, in terms of the available temperature differential relatively to a specified comfort set point, with simulation performed by way of a specific model.

The paper discusses the concept of an adaptive thermal comfort design methodology and its impact on the selection, design and performance of climate control systems for large public spaces with transient occupancy in hot and humid climates. It outlines the design methodology which is based on providing localised comfort conditions to zones within a building based on its occupancy patterns, activity of occupants and acceptable thermal comfort criteria. The methodology focuses on quantifying the collective impact of space operating parameters on the thermal comfort of its occupants.

Given the major role played by windows with regard to energy losses and gains from buildings in respectively cold and hot climates, accurate prediction of the heat transfer through its glazing materials is of great importance in building energy simulation. In most of the building energy simulation programs, solar radiation absorption inside glazing layers is usually treated considering that all the radiation is uniformly absorbed in the glazing.

It is well known that humidity influences cooling load, thermal comfort and durability of buildings and various items in them. Many works on prediction of humidity variation in a room have regarded the humidity as unique in a space. However, it does depend on air movement. This paper describes calculations of minute moisture distributions in a room affected by moisture buffering of porous walls. The air velocity distribution is calculated by CFD using two different turbulence models. Then the heat and vapor transient transport in walls and space is calculated.

In this paper, we present a heating system with thermal storage using a heat pump which supplies heat to the thermal storage equipment installed in the crawl space of residential house insulated at the foundation walls. This system can charge heat by using cheap nighttime electricity and discharge the stored heat at daytime.

The amount of sunlight and daylight through the façade is a key factor in new façade design. Designing a new façade, based on the idea that a façade should be able to function and perform mostly autonomously (i.e.

In summer, the shady planting is expected for providing shadow on building envelope and reducing reflected solar radiation from the front yard. The heat load simulation program which can take into consideration the shadow effects caused by trees including the effect of the long wave radiation exchange is developed by the authors. The program used to examine the effects of trees on the room thermal environment as well as heating and cooling loads of a model house. In the simulation, two kinds of trees, evergreen broad-leaved tree and deciduous broad-leaved tree were assumed.

This paper reports a study of a unique system that integrates many renewable energy resources to achieve zero CO2 emission for building services for the head office of a company specialised in renewable energies. A dynamic thermal model was developed to simulate the summer cooling using both design criteria and recorded data. The monitored data acquired by the Building Management System (BMS) were also analysed with the predicted results to assess thermal performance of the system.

As well known, Hourly weather data should be available before running building energy consumption simulation.A large number of Chinese locations have only six-hourly or daily measured weather data, because observed data are not easily obtained or not digitalized. Measured hourly, sixhourly and daily weather data for four cities in China, namely Xi’an, Kunming, Hangzhou and Shantou were gathered and analyzed. Three climatic variables, namely dry-bulb temperature, relative humidity and atmospheric pressure, were investigated.

A universal lumped model is developed with the aim to predict the thermal performance of Double Skin facade. Three modules – ventilation, heat transfer and penetration - are coupled to comprehensively describe the energy and mass transfer processes. The unknown parameters, resistance coefficient and heat convection coefficient, are discussed and estimated. The influences of cavity shading position, cavity depth and ventilation height on energy performances are analyzed at the end of the paper based on the simulation results.