Building performance simulation for sustainable building design and operation

This paper aims to provide a general view of the background and current state of building performance simulation, which has the potential to deliver, directly or indirectly, substantial benefits to building stakeholders and to the environment. However the building simulation community faces many challenges for the future. Several challenges relate to the need to provide better design support. Issues include early phase design support, multi-scale approaches (from construction detail to district level), uncertainty and sensitivity analysis, robustness analysis (employing use and environmental change scenarios), optimization under uncertainty, inverse approach (to address "how to" instead of being able to answer "what if" questions), multi-physics (particularly inclusion of electrical power flow modeling), and integration in the construction process (using building information modeling (BIM), process modeling, etc). Another group of challenges relates to the need to provide support for building operation and management. The issues include accurate in-use energy consumption prediction and model predictive control

About the current state of building performance simulation and IBPSA

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HVAC system simulation: overview, issues and some solutions

Integrated performance simulation of buildings’ heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems can help in reducing energy consumption and increasing occupant comfort. Recognizing this fact, in the last forty years many tools have been developed to help achieving this goal. In this paper we introduce a categorization of these tools with respect to which problems they are meant to deal with and summarize current approaches used for modelling (i) HVAC components, (ii) HVAC control and (iii) HVAC systems in general. Further in this paper, we list issues associated with applications of HVAC modelling and simulation. Finally, we present and discuss co-simulation as one of solutions that can alleviate some of the recognized issues

On supporting design decisions in conceptual design addressing specification uncertainties using performance simulation

Building performance simulation (BPS) is a powerful technique to predict the performance of a design proposal. It is extensively used towards the end of the design process to, for example, prove code compliance. However, its potential to provide design guidance early in the design process is rarely exploited. That is although decisions taken during conceptual design have a disproportionate impact on the final building performance, relative to time and effort consumed (Domeschek et al, 1994). To intensify the use of BPS early is to extend its capabilities. One issue to be addressed is the building performance uncertainty due to a wide range of plausible (uncertain) design decisions. A case study was conducted to evaluate the use and potential of uncertainty and sensitivity analysis techniques in BPS to support conceptual design. It was found that the techniques can be implemented with little effort. The results are promising for making explicit design decisions and for improving inter-design team communication

Considerations regarding optimization of dynamic facades for improved energy performance and visual comfort

This contribution discusses requirements, challenges and solutions for simulation-based design optimization of climate adaptive building shells. We compare the different needs of this approach with design optimization of conventional, static facades, and do this with a focus on achieving energy savings while improving indoor environmental quality in terms of thermal comfort and dynamic daylight performance. The solution we propose couples ESP-r with Radiance through the Building Controls Virtual Test Bed, and employs a receding horizon model-based control approach with evolutionary optimization algorithms to ensure high-performance operational façade adaptation

Experiences testing enhanced building performance simulation prototypes on potential user group

Previous work involving literature review, simulation tool analysis and interviews with world leading building performance consulting engineers and designers has shown that building performance simulation (BPS) is mostly limited to code compliance checking of the final building design whilst it could provide useful information and guidelines throughout the entire design process [Hopfe et al., 2005/ 2006]. It is aim of this research to enhance the current use of building performance simulation (BPS) in practice and therefore to build up a multi-aspects prototype simulation-based design environment for optimization of buildings and systems among others. For that reason, three prototypes were developed in the past addressing simple uncertainty/ sensitivity analysis, decision making under uncertainty/ sensitivity, and the use of optimization techniques for multi-objective optimization. An online survey was prepared to check how designers feel satisfied with the different prototypes, the guided set-up and the varying outcome. This paper summarizes the results of the user reaction to the three approaches