Using fractional experimental designs to establish multi-parametric expressions for energy consumption of commercial buildings

The large advancement in the market of building materials and of HVAC systems leads to a wide variety of technical solutions that can be employed to build an efficient low energy commercial building.The comparison between different combinations of parameters representing the main elements of the envelope, lighting management and solar blinds, office automation, plug consumptions and efficiency of the HVAC system is always of special interest to building owners and HVAC design engineers; however, such a study is rarely totally accomplished because of the time required.The paper describes a fast method for organizing simulations through the use of fractional factorial designs. The method permits reduction of the number of simulations needed to cover all combinations of influent parameters.The reduction result shows that it is feasible and quick to determine mutli-parametric models for a large range of building types. As a result, consumption can be calculated bypassing steps of projects description, sizing of components and running the simulations. The precision of such multi-parametric models is established by comparison with full simulation.