An Excel macro-programming model of the thermal behaviour of open and enclosed swimming pools is run in seven different scenarios of increasing complexity. To secure a swimming season for the whole year, the use of a tent, a battery of collectors and auxiliary heat, to cope with winter, is advice. The tent can be removed or vented from November to March and must be tightly closed the rest of the year. An area of collectors equal to half the pool area will avoid excessive overheat and will assure the use of the pool in the morning during summer.

Building design and control applications can benefit from daylight simulation. Currently, most daylight simulation applications work with simplified sky luminance models.

Energy and environment issues such as the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and ecological-friendly buildings are increasingly of interest in the Korean housing market. A number of technologies are considered appropriate in the Korean context, including roof-top gardens, low energy underfloor heating and renewable energy (RE) systems. To successfully adopt such technologies into domestic buildings, it is important to identify suitable technology types and capacities at an early design stage and effectively to integrate them in  the building.

This paper critically examines the use of Analytic Target Cascading as a multi-level, hierarchical design optimization model for formulating simulation-based design tasks in architecture. A case study is used to illustrate the main steps involved in posing and solving an ATC problem. With an emphasis on problem formulation, this study is used as the basis of highlighting issues confronted while posing design analysis problems in a model-based systems framework. 

This paper proposes an automated commissioning method for air-conditioning systems through comparing the measured energy consumption with the simulated energy consumption, which is simulated using a model newly developed through fitting manufacturer’s specification data. This commissioning method is verified using a Gas-engine Heat Pump (GHP) air-conditioning system. The results show that this method can verify whether a real air-conditioning system is performing in conformity with the design intent or not.

Heating Canadian homes is an energy intensive endeavour. Factors such as the northerly climate and dispersed population cannot be avoided but inefficiencies with heating system design can. The mismatch between the grade of heat required to heat a home and that produced by conventional heat sources results in large amounts of wasted energy and exergy. Low–grade heating sources, such as ground source heat pumps, when combined with low-temperature distribution systems offer a more suitable and efficient means of heating homes.

The paper deals with the computational simulations of the performance of the hybrid ventilation system for the moderate climate, which was developed within the framework of the RESHYVENT project. The main goal of the simulations was to investigate the performance of the system in urban environment under different climatic conditions, representing different potential of natural driving forces (wind, buoyancy). The TRNSYS 15 with the TRNFlow air flow network module was employed as a simulation tool. 

In recent years, indoor humidity levels are gaining greater attention in building design and operation, due to the increasing concern over moisture-related problems, such as mold growth, indoor air quality and discomfort of the occupants. At the same time, building energy consumption, especially at peak electric demand, is also becoming a significant operating cost conern. It has been suggested that besides energy recovery, the inclusion of an energy recovery ventilator (ERV) with a right-sized cooling coil can improve temperature and humidity control in buildings.

In this paper, the mathematical model of a HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning) equipment is described. This system is inserted into a computer code developed in Matlab/Simulink platform which is devoted to the analysis of building thermal behavior and HVAC closed-loop control performance. The model is presented in terms of non-linear state-space equations that represent the energy and mass balances for each HVAC component. Two control loop structures are described and analyzed. The IMC structure is used for the PID controllers tuning procedure.

Earth-to-Air Heat Exchanger (ETAHE) technology has been implemented in many mechanical ventilation systems. A literature review revealed that recent advancements in ETAHE modeling were focused on simulating heat conduction in soil. Air temperatures along the duct length were determined by calculating heat convection on the ETAHE duct surfaces using various empirical correlations. Comparison of the correlations for typical ETAHE in mechanical ventilation systems revealed that large discrepancy exists among them.