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In this paper, an approach to the optimum volume of rock bed, its charged thermal energy and the optimum air flow rate for an air-based solar heating system in charging mode is presented. The relationship between the optimum volume of rock bed and the air flow rate is approximately obtained as a theoretical solution of the linear approximation equation, and the charged thermal energy in the rock bed is approximately obtained as a function of the air flow rate.

With the advent of the computing age, heat balance based techniques for simulating thermal loads in buildings became a reality for architects and engineers. However, since the 1970s, the capabilities of most of the well-known heat balance based simulation programs have remained fairly stagnant. Much of the reason behind this trend lies with the complexity of the programming required to deal with the fundamental physics encountered in a building and the relative simplicity of the programming languages that were available.

Many of the popular building energy simulation programs around the world are reaching maturity– some use simulation methods (and even code) that originated in the 1960s. For more than two decades, the U. S. government supported development of two hourly building energy simulation programs, BLAST and DOE–2. Designed in the days of mainframe computers, expanding their capabilities further has become difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Because of these problems, a U.S.

EESLISM is a tool developed to simulate the whole energy system consisting of both building thermal system and mechanical system for heating and cooling and domestic hot water supply. Although the algorithm is based on the heat balance model, the algorithm is designed to reduce the size of simultaneous equations for increasing computation efficiency and simplification in developing software.

The Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC) is developing a new software (EnergyGauge USA) which allows simple calculation and rating of energy use of residential buildings around the United States. In the past, most residential analysis and rating software have used simplified methods for calculation of residential building energy performance due to limitations on computing speed. However, EnergyGauge USA, takes advantage of current generation personal computers that perform an hourly annual computer simulation inless than 30 seconds.

A large empirical validation exercise was recently completed in the framework of International Energy Agency (IEA) Solar Heating And Cooling (SHAC) Task 22 (Building Energy Analysis Tools) (Sub-task A3 « Empirical validation »). It includes a set of 10 modelling teams using different software programs from Europe and USA. ETNA test cells (EDFFrance) have been used for this exercise. Four rounds have been completed, only the first round in blind way. At the end, different modelling problems have been corrected.

The potential of building energy simulation is now well recognised and the use of the technology by progressive energy sector companies is growing. The success of any building performance assessment hinges on the capabilities of the tool, the collective competences of the team formed to apply it and, most crucially, the rigour of the inhouse quality control procedure. Two core issues facing the professions are the management of simulation and the quality assurance of the related models and appraisal results.

This paper deals about the presentation of a new software RUNEOLE used to provide weather data in buildings physics. RUNEOLE associates three modules leading to the description, the modelling and the generation of weather data. The first module is dedicated to the description of each climatic variable included in the database.

The experiments involving clothed subjects are conducted to reproduce the situation in which people enter an air-conditioned room just after sweating, and analyzed using a combined model, which consists of two-node model for thermophysiological response of human body and simultaneous heat and moisture transfer model for thermal and hygric behavior of clothing. The experimental and calculated results of the skin temperatures, the clothing temperatures and the weight are compared.

The cooling effect caused by long wave radiation between the roof surface and the sky is studied here. The external surfaces may cool down below the dew point of the air and the condensation may form [1]. Typically, the covering of cold roofs has a low thermal resistance and the condensation may form also on its downside. These phenomena are quantified and discussed here. It is shown that the amount of condensation could be surprising high, even by temperatures of external air about 0 oC and higher.