MODELS AND METHODS FOR DESCRIBING THE THERMAL CHARACTERISTICS OF BUILDINGS AND BUILDING COMPONENTS USING EXPERIMENTAL DATA

Outdoor testing of building and building components under real weather conditions provide useful information about the dynamical performance. Such knowledge is needed for properly characterizing the heat dynamics and provides useful information that can be used eg. to implement energy saving strategies. In order to analyse such tests models and methods for dynamic analysis are required. However a wide variety of models and methods exists, and the problem of choosing the most appropriate approach for every particular case is a non-trivial and interdisciplinary problem. A knowledge of a large family of these approaches may become very useful for selecting a suitable approach for each particular case.
This paper presents a review of models and methods that can be applied for modelling the thermal characteristics of building and building components using data from outdoor testing. The choice of approach depends on the purpose of the modelling, existence of prior physical knowledge, the data and the available statistical tools. In the paper a variety of models and methods are outlined and compared. It is shown that mathematically a strong link exists between a large number of widely used models belonging to the class of linear and stationary stochastic models. The characteristics of each approach will be highlighted. Some available software tools applying each of the described methods will be mentioned. A case study is considered in the paper.