Validating integrated environmental solutions software for air temperature of a typical Malaysian recessed wall façade office building

Abstract

Technological advances have assisted in the development of modern software tools which can be used to assess and improve the energy efficiency of a building at the early stage of conceptual design. However, this study aims at validating the accuracy of one of the paramount building simulation software Integrated Environmental Solutions - Virtual Environment (IES-VE), widely used today. The methodology of this study involves physical measurements and simulation exercises. A longitudinal physical measurement was carried out using HOBO ware U-12 in 5 different points of the room space from 18th October to 4th December 2016. But, for validation, a critical atmospheric day (21st November 2016) was selected for the comparison. The room air temperature was first measured before comparing it to the simulated air temperature obtained from IES. After several analyses, the comparison of the measured room air temperature and simulation results showed similarity, discrepancy, closeness, significance, and accuracy. The investigation findings revealed a percentage discrepancy of 11.03%, which is less than the threshold of 20% between the measured and simulated air temperature of the case study model. Other findings show that: R2 = 0.98, MBE = 0.8, °C and RMSE = 1.70°C are all within the acceptable values of significance between the two data. These results signify that IES-VE is valid, accurate, and applicable for this study’s further Building Performance Simulation (BPS)