Abstract
Thermal comfort is defined as “that condition of mind which expresses satisfaction
with the thermal environment’ [1] [2]. Field studies have been completed in order to establish
the governing conditions for thermal comfort [3]. These studies showed that the internal
climate of a room was the strongest factor in establishing thermal comfort. Direct
manipulation of the internal climate is necessary to retain an acceptable level of thermal
comfort. In order for Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS) strategies to be
efficiently utilised it is necessary to have the ability to predict the effect that activating a
heating/cooling source (radiators, windows and doors) will have on the room. The numerical
modelling of the domain can be challenging due to necessity to capture temperature
stratification and/or different heat sources (radiators, computers and human beings).
Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) models are usually utilised for this function because
they provide the level of details required. Although they provide the necessary level of
accuracy these models tend to be highly computationally expensive especially when transient
behaviour needs to be analysed. Consequently they cannot be integrated in BEMS.
This paper presents and describes validation of a CFD-ROM method for real-time
simulations of building thermal performance. The CFD-ROM method involves the automatic
extraction and solution of reduced order models (ROMs) from validated CFD simulations.
The test case used in this work is a room of the Environmental Research Institute (ERI)
Building at the University College Cork (UCC). ROMs have shown that they are sufficiently
accurate with a total error of less than 1% and successfully retain a satisfactory representation
of the phenomena modelled. The number of zones in a ROM defines the size and complexity
of that ROM. It has been observed that ROMs with a higher number of zones produce more
accurate results. As each ROM has a time to solution of less than 20 seconds they can be
integrated into the BEMS of a building which opens the potential to real time physics based
building energy modelling.
Original language | English |
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Number of pages | 8 |
Publication status | Published - 21 Oct 2014 |
Event | Roomvent 2014 - Sao Paulo, Brazil Duration: 19 Oct 2014 → 22 Jan 2015 |
Conference
Conference | Roomvent 2014 |
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Country/Territory | Brazil |
City | Sao Paulo |
Period | 19/10/2014 → 22/01/2015 |
Keywords
- Computational modelling
- reduced order models
- natural ventilation
- , energy efficient building