Hua Sheng He , Amin Hammad and Paul Fazio
Year:
2005
Bibliographic info:
Building Simulation, 2005, Montreal, Canada, 8 p

Improving thermal performance of building envelopes reduces energy consumption of residential buildings. This reduction is better fostered if the thermal analysis is included in the overall performance analysis of the building envelope or the building system. An integrated approach with IT and international standards, such as IFC, can ensure that the building envelope satisfies energy requirements as well as other requirements such as hygrothermal, acoustic, aesthetic, or economic criteria. This paper presents the concept of a building envelope performance evaluation framework which includes an IFC-compatible CAD application, a preprocessor, an application integrator, a postprocessor, etc. The proposed framework could extract the geometric data of a house from CAD drawings in IFC data model, link to performance evaluation applications, and compare evaluation results with a set of criteria. Finally, a system which partially implements the concept of this framework and a case study are also discussed.