Object-oriented sub-zonal modelling for efficient energy-related building simulation

Abstract

When modelling and simulating a building to evaluate its energy-related performance, reproducing the behaviour of the contained air volumes is very important. For that purpose, fully mixed models (i.e. for instance, a single temperature per room) easily prove inadequate, while computational fluid dynamics ones do not provide sufficient simulation speed, and are difficult to formulate and manage in a modular manner. This manuscript presents a somehow intermediate solution based on the object-oriented modelling paradigm, and implemented in the Modelica language. The proposal advantages are illustrated by two significant examples. © 2011 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.