English

There has been widespread concern over the high energy consumption and the often less-than-satisfactory environmental control performance of most air conditioning systems relying on conventional control schemes. In this paper, a new approach to tackle the problem is presented, which aims at achieving a high quality control of the indoor thermal environment with reduced energy consumption.

This paper addresses the development of a prototype system for energy building simulation by coupling commercially available CAD systems for architecture to numerical computational methods. Three fundamental directions of the research work are presented:-enhance and expedite the traditional and manual design activities;-open new design possibilities in building design by exploring graphics, database capabilities and innovate programming;-interfaces to generally available computational software using the same graphical environment.

This paper presents the application of geometric modeling and various performance simulation tools in architectural design, highlighting their respective impact on the design decisions made in the process. Based on the experiences gained in this process, a critical review of the potentials and problems of current simulation tools and simulation-based design decision-making strategies is offered. Particular attention is given to the crucial dialectic of process and tool in supporting knowledge transfer and decision?making in building design.

A new method to simulate the daylight performance of fenestration systems and spaces is presented. This new method, named IDC (Integration of Directional Coefficients), allows the simulation of the daylight performance of fenestration systems and spaces of arbitrary complexity, under any sun, sky and ground conditions. The IDC method is based on the combination of scale model photometry and computer-based simulation.

This study (*) has been developped in real site on gymnasium situated in the center of FRANCE which was experimented during two years. This building is equipped with two interconnected energy saving systems. In this first part of the paper the authors describe rapidly the two remarkable energy saving systems of the building. Then, they present theoretical and validation studies which were necessary to simulate correctly these two components.

In this paper we elaborate on a general representation for robots in building construction, to simulate the robots' capabilities to operate within different building projects and in cooperation with human labor crews. We introduce motion rules as a way to capture the diversity in the different robot types in a uniform manner. We explore a motion language to model the behavior of robots in the real-world environment of building construction.

The simulation of temperature and pressure development in the ventilation systems of an offshore oil platform during the initial phase of afire has been carried out using the IDA solver (IDA 1991). This paper focuses on the utility shaft and its ventilation system. The simulations are part of a project for the Norwegian oil company Statoil. That project is a total analysis of the situations in case of afire, with the objectives to decide the strategies of smoke control during the early stage of the fire.

The Simulation Problem Analysis Research Kernel (SPARK) environment for simulation of nonlinear differential algebraic systems has been revised to improve modeling convenience, modeling flexibility, and solution efficiency. Solution efficiency has been enhanced by automatic decomposition of the problem into strongly connected components, characterized as separately solvable subproblems.

An overview of the principles used to develop productive interfaces is presented, and afresh approach to the design and use of Simulation Systems is suggested. The notion of "perspective" (a way of viewing the HumanComputer Interaction) is introduced and then extended with analogy. The aim is to encourage a complete exploration of the roles that users play when interacting with computer systems and to ensure that adequate user models and functionality are developed

The most effective way of establishing confidence in the ability of a simulation tool to model a particular component or system is to compare the predictions with measured data. These data can derive from experiments in test cells or monitored test buildings. In both cases, however, the performance cannot be directly translated to generalised conclusions because the conditions of the test are not representative of conditions within typical real buildings.