Case study—how could we optimize the energy-efficient design for an extra-large railway station with a comprehensive simulation?

As a famous large-scale transportation hub in China, the Nanjing South Railway Station (NSRS) is a huge building of 380,000 m2 and 50 meters high, with complex vertical route organization and comprehensive function zones. Because of its large façade, skylight, and huge air infiltration, the NSRS has encountered many difficulties in terms of HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning) design, especially in calculating the most accurate heating and cooling loads during air infiltration. In order to address these issues, DeST (Designer’s Simulation Toolkit), a building energy simulation tool developed by Tsinghua University, was combined with other tools to simulate the NSRS’s HVAC load for an entire year. It is hoped that the results of this study will be helpful for exploring more efficient design strategies using simulation in other similar large-scale transportation hubs.