This study analyses vertical temperature profiles for displacement ventilation depending on a ceiling height of an small office room. This study purposes to investigate the influence of the ceiling height on thermal comfort of the occupants. Numerical simulations are carried out for a modeled room which dimensions 5.3m by 5.44m by 2.5m, 3m and 3.5m ceiling height. A finite volume method is used for solving the governing equations and low Reynolds number k-ε model is applied as a turbulent model.

The present study aims to validate several cross and single-sided natural ventilation models implemented in the Building Hygrothermal and Energy Simulation program PowerDomus (Mendes et al., 2003) i.e. the British Standard (1999) model for cross ventilation and the de Gids and Phaff's (1982) and Larsen’s (2006) models for single-sided ventilation. Airflow rates obtained by those models are compared to the measurements performed in two full-scale buildings: one single room house located in a wind tunnel facility and one real three-storey building.

Air quality in aircraft cabins has long been criticized. Current widely-used air distribution systems on airplanes dilute inside generated pollutants by promoting air mixing and thus impose risks of infectious airborne disease transmission. In addition, low moisture content in cabin is believed to be responsible for headache, tiredness and lots of other unknown symptoms.

In order to assess the influence of energy reduction initiatives, to determine the expected annual cost, to calculate life cycle cost, emission impact, etc. it is crucial to be able to assess the energy consumption reasonably accurate.  The present work undertakes a theoretical and empirical study of the uncertainty of energy consumption assessment of domestic buildings. The calculated energy consumption of a number of almost identical domestic buildings in Denmark is compared with the measured energy consumption.

In practise many buildings show significant deviation between the predicted annual energy consumption and the actual energy consumption. One of the main reasons for the discrepancy is the difference between the assumptions made during the calculations and the actual conditions including occupants’ behaviour.  This paper presents two methods to consider uncertainty and spread of energy consumption calculations in practise, namely a simulation approach and a safety factor approach.

Increasing attention is being paid to the application of uncertainty and sensitivity analysis methods to model validation and building simulation. The idea is to let users to apply uncertainty bands to their model input data. These bands are then propagated through the model to determine the uncertainty bands of the simulation results. Mathematical methods to deal with uncertainties in computer simulations are well developed.

In this paper, a sensitivity analysis has been carried out on a set of variables identified during the building conceptual design stage. The sensitivity analysis is performed on a simple intermediate floor of a typical multi-storey office representative of the office building sector for different Italian climatic zones. The conclusions are drawn in terms of sensitivity indexes of energy performance indicators for a set of different design variables and for different climatic zones.

Sensitivity analysis is a key part of a comprehensive energy simulation study.  Monte-Carlo techniques have been successfully applied to many simulation tools. Several sampling techniques have been proposed in the literature; however to date there has been no comparison of their performance for typical building simulation applications. This paper examines the performance of simple random, stratified and Latin Hypercube sampling when applied to a typical building simulation problem.

Shading devices used to protect from unwanted solar radiation acting on interior surfaces change air velocity and volume flow rates depending on their geometry and position on the building exterior. Changes in volume flow rates, interior velocities and the amount of solar radiation can be advantageous or disadvantageous depending on the time of day.

The use of operable shading devices impacts building loads significantly. The need exists for an explicit treatment of window shading devices in the design of energy efficient buildings through simulation. A general framework for modeling complex fenestration systems has recently been implemented in ESP-r. The underlying models have been developed with emphasis on computational efficiency and straightforward input requirements.