IBPSA1997

Passport  Plus  is  a  new  design  tool  for  building thermal analysis which was developed within the European research project PASCOOL of the European Commission. The program is structured in such a way as to be able to easily handle future additions and enhancements. Some of the program's features include a more detailed treatment of thermal mass, the building's surrounding external environment, small scale micro climate, external remote obstacles, external shading devices like louvers, improved treatment of natural ventilation phenomena.

Modal-based model reduction techniques have been modified in order to improve their performance when applied to building thermal models. The basic idea is to take the spectral characteristics of meteorological inputs into account in such reduction techniques, which are very sensitive to the hypothesis concerning inputs nature. The resulting modified modal-based reduction methods have been implemented in Matlab and tested. From the performed analyses, it may be concluded that the introduced modifications significantly improve results.

Heat losses from foundations are poorly considered in many whole-building energy programs which are used to model houses. This despite the fact that foundations contribute significantly to residential heating requirements. A regression-based algorithm known as BASESIMP has been developed to improve the state of foundation heat-loss modelling in whole-building energy programs.

This paper reports the first results of an ongoing project aimed at generating design information /knowledge for wet central heating (WCH) refurbishment in multi-family houses in Central Europe. In that practical context, integral modelling and simulation of a building and its heating system is demonstrated. Given the underlying importance of the dynamic thermal interactions, building and plant are modelled at a high level of resolution.

This paper gives an introduction into the simulation of the thermic behaviour of a modernized building including the calculation of both single and two pipe heating by a new TYPE57 for simulation of heating pipe systems within the program TRNSYS. The data simulated are compared with measurements. The occupancy behaviour and the kind of decentral control have a decisive influence on heat consumption within a building.

This paper briefly reviews recent research into the modelling of complex fenestration systems, before presenting some results obtained by the use of a new (developing) simulation model, utilising Monte Carlo Methods and Geometric Optics (ray tracing).

The CLIM 2000 software environment [1] was developed by the Electricity Applications in Buildings Branch of the French utility company, Electricité de France. This software, which has been in operation since June 1989, allows the behavior of a whole building to be simulated. During the last phase of development, special attention, and hence research resources, were devoted to developing an open-ended software package, where new models of regulator could be added in a user friendly way.

During the academic year 95-96 an NMF based model library has been developed by the IDA group. The library contains detailed and simplified zone models, full finite difference and reduced RC-network wall models, different types of solar radiation calculation models, state-of-the-art window models, local climate control models and some supporting Fortran subroutines. Among the most interesting models are the detailed convective - radiative zone with full non-linear radiative and convective heat transfer using a general view factor calculation algorithm and the RC-wall model.

A new method for predicting and evaluating the energy performance of large commercial and institutional buildings is developed, as an alternative to using existing comprehensive energy simulation programs like DOE-2 and BLAST, or oversimplified tools like analyzing monthly utility bills. The steps are convenient and practical in their potential use by the energy analysts.

In this paper ongoing work using the computer algebra system Maple V and the object-based en­vironment Spark is presented, that aim at the an­ alytical approximate resolution of problems en­countered in air flows in dwelling zones, using computer algebra and expert system techniques. The application domain is the building science. The current scope of the work at  this stage  is two dimensional and steady state.