Study on energy modeling methods of atrium buildings

In recent years, highly glazed atriums are favorable to architectural aesthetics and to taking advantage of daylighting and solar heating. However, t he estimation of the building load of an atrium building is difficult because of the complex thermal phenomena occurred in the atrium space. The study aims to find out the methods of conducting accurate simulations of the cooling loads of various types of atriums, using whole building energy simulation tool – EnergyPlus. Cases of atrium buildings are collected and classified into various categories. For every category of atrium building, CFD models and energy models are developed. The simplified methods of simulating the cooling loads of atriums using different room air temperature patterns are summarised and applied to EnergyPlus. The non-dimensional height room air models with CFD results are defined as the baseline models to find out the most accurate model for every category of  atrium building. In order to validate the methods an actual atrium office building is tested on site on a typical summer day and the results are compared with simulation results using the simplified methods. Finally, appropriate methods of simulating different types of atrium buildings are proposed.