External coupling between BES and HAM programs for whole-building simulation

This paper discusses a procedure for the two-way run time external coupling between Building Energy Simulation (BES) and building envelope Heat, Air and Moisture (HAM) programs for enhanced whole building simulation. The coupling procedure presented here involves a description of the relevant physical phenomena at the interface between the programs, domain overlaps, coupling variables, coupling strategy and types of boundary condition. The procedure is applied using the programs ESP-r and HAMFEM, where the implementation and verification issues are discussed. This work concludes that the coupling between BES and HAM programs is feasible, and it can potentially enhance the accuracy in whole-building simulation.