English

The Energy Kernel System (EKS) project has reached the final year of its three year duration. The modus operandi has been designed, a class taxonomy devised and the software implementation process commenced. This paper describes the elements of the EKS as it is now envisaged and elaborates on the object oriented programming (OOP) approach being employed in its construction. In particular, the form and content of the EKS classes, the role of inheritance and the scope of the in?built domain theories are elaborated.

Hot-2000 is a computer model which assists builders, engineers, and architects in the design and simulation of residential buildings for thermal effectiveness, passive solar heating, and the operation and performance of heating and cooling systems. Many of the basic heat loss algorithms were derived or adapted from the National Research Council of Canada's HOTCAN 3.0 program. Major additions and modifications have been made, mainly in the simulation of heating, ventilation and cooling systems. Weather data libraries are available for 76 Canadian locations and for 194 U.S. locations.

This paper describes a computer simulation program being developed at the Hong Kong Polytechnic for dynamic modelling of heat and moisture transport in buildings. At present, the program can simulate simultaneous heat and moisture transfer in the walls and slabs of a room and its effect on the room temperature and humidity. Effects of outdoor weather and air?conditioning are simultaneously simulated.

A new bioclimatic building concept based on solardriven ventilation is analysed through the use of physical and numerical modelling. Measurements are conducted for a 1/12th laboratory scale model designed to replicate the full-scale prototype and its microclimate. Predictions are obtained by employing advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques, and the experimental results provide the benchmarking required in the development of the numerical model, which may offer a viable alternative to expensive and hard to set full-scale tests.

Me Energy Kernel System (EKS) is an energy simulation environment that facilitates the creation, validation and maintenance of simulation programs using the object-oriented programming (OOP) paradigm. Ibis paper introduces the particular aspect of the EKS development concerning the fundamental issues of system representation; that is, the theory encapsulation and system solution which constitute the implementation of the generalised solver classes in the object-oriented environment.

The transient simulation program TRNSYS was originally developed to aid in the study of solar energy systems. It was first made public in 1975 when Version 6.0 wag released. Since then it has undergone continual development, and a series of versions have been documented, released, and supported. The current version, 13.1, was released in October, 1990, and is available in mainframe, IBM PC and Macintosh formats.

Design Reference Years are used as climatic input data for computer calculations-simulations - mainly of solar energy systems, and of building energy consumption, energy conservation, indoor climate and comfort. They can be seen as a new generation of such data collections already known as Test Reference Years in Europe or Typical Meteorological Year or WYEC in US.

The Energy Simulation Research Unit of the University of Strathclyde has recently undertaken a major effort to support the application of building performance assessment tools within architectural and engineering practices, universities and research groups around the UK. This has taken the form of a support service, funded by ETSU of the Department of Energy, to assist members of their Passive Solar Programme who are using the ESP suite of thermal simulation tools.

The TEF (Transfer Evolution Formalism) and the ZOOM software (Zone Organized Optimal Modelling) have been developped in order to give a flexible framework for physics oriented modelling. Their construction is based on a clear statement of the necessary partition ning/interfacing process, which leads to the definitions of the two classes of simulation objects : cells (elementary physical systems) and transfers (interfacing cells). This structure is the basis for system nesting and coupling analysis implementation.

The study is focussed on the sensibility of optimal start/stop control of hydronic heating systems on boiler and radiator sizing, supply temperature lift, and the building occupancy pattern. For the prediction of optimal start/stop times the recursive least squares method and the gradient method are evaluated. Computer simulation is applied on the example of an office building equipped with an hydronic heating system.