Building simulation as an assisting tool in designing an energy efficient building: A case study

Decisions made in the very first stages of a building’s design often have a significant impact on energy efficiency and internal environment of the building. Although many buildings have energy efficiency strategies embedded in their conceptual design, it is seldom that these concepts would be fully analysed at the initial design stages. In this paper, a case study based on current IES office building is presented as an example to explore an approach, which uses building simulation technology to evaluate a variety of envelope thermal characteristics and low carbon technologies in an integrated manner at the early design stage in order to assist the delivery of a sustainable green office building with a high rating of energy performance. To be able to achieve these aims, a building energy simulation software IES Virtual Environment (VE) is used to conduct a series of sensitivity analysis on a set of design parameters which have good prospects of influencing the building performance. The parameters include the building orientation, construction, natural ventilation scheme integrated with window type and opening area, shading devices and how they are positioned, daylighting, heating strategy. The daylighting calculation is conducted by using the Radiance module implemented in the IES VE. Additionally, an overheating analysis is performed to examine the thermal comfort within the whole office building. Finally, the paper discusses how each parameter interacts with one another and influences they have on the building’s performance to determine the effectiveness for the optimum design solutions of comfortable and energy efficient buildings.