building simulation

Thermal comfort and indoor air quality (IAQ) play a vital role in creating a pleasant and healthier indoor environment for occupants. The supply air conditions and the concentration of CO2 contaminant present in the supply air can decide the comfort level and purity of air in indoor environments. In this study, an effort was made to investigate the combined effect of a chilled ceiling and displacement ventilation (CC-DV) air conditioning (A/C) system that would possibly achieve good thermal comfort and IAQ in a proposed office building subjected to hot and humid climatic conditions.

This paper reviews the application of CFD for designing and parametric studies of wind-induced natural ventilation. The approaches employed in such applications of CFD are whole-domain and domain-decoupled CFD modelling. The domain-decoupled technique separately analyses the external airflow fields outside and internal flows inside a building. In the whole-domain approach, the outdoor and indoor airflow is modelled simultaneously and within the same computational domain.

This work deals with the evaluation of the performances of phase change materials (PCMs) coupledwith a ventilated ceiling system in order to reduce summer cooling loads and improve the internalcomfort in buildings, thus enhancing the positive effect of night ventilation.Object of the study is the numerical simulation of the thermal behaviour of a typical open space officelocated in three Italian cities during the summer. Indoor climate is only controlled by means of passiveventilation; a usual ventilation system configuration (i.e.

An important part of IEA 34/43 is concerning validation of building simulation models.

The SOLVENT window is an innovative glazing system concept that involves the use of a rotating frame, an absorptive glazing and a naturally ventilated vertical channel, in order to improve the balance between the visual comfort and the energy efficiency of windows.

The authors have created a Neural-Fuzzy Assistant which acts as a Decision Support System and helps to perform quickly and easily the estimations of office building energy consumption. The Neural-Fuzzy Assistant presented in this paper allows the user to determine the impact of eleven building parameters on the electrical annual and monthly energy consumption, annual and monthly maximum electrical demand and cooling and heating annual consumption and demand.

The practical use of building simulation software requires a global and comprehensible interpretation of results for decision support in design. We propose a method in which the temperature of the free-running building is used to express: 1) the ratio between energy consumption for heating and cooling, 2) energy saved when ventilation is used instead of mechanical cooling, and 3) the degree of building adaptation to the environment.

Describes the application of the HERS BESTEST system to a building energy simulation computer program. There was good agreement between the simulation computer program predictions and those of the reference programs. Different simulation inputs can be the cause of major differences between program predictions. The authors recommended that the HERS BESTEST manual be modified to include detailed information about the house models used to generate the results with the reference software tools.

In many cases natural ventilation is used to ensure an acceptable indoor environment. However it is difficult to design a building for acceptable ventilation rates and indoor comfort without the proper tools or guidelines. The passive building simulation tool Building Toolbox was extended with natural ventilation models for the design of natural ventilated buildings. The simulation tool was verified with actual measurements during three case studies to ensure its integrity and to illustrate its applicability in this field.

In 1995, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) began planning for a new generation of building simulation tools. As part of this planning activity, DOE created an inventory of DOE-sponsored tools in early 1996. By mid-1996, this work had evolved into a web-based directory with information on 50 software tools. Today, the directory contains information on more than 125 tools from around the world. To inform the simulation tool planning efforts, DOE sponsored workshops in August 1995 and June 1996, inviting energy simulation developers and users.