| Aim | To review ESP-r's simulation facilities. |
| Learning outcome | Ability to initiate simulations and change time, climate and numerical control parameters. |
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Task
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Instructions
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1. Explore changing the simulation period, the number of time steps per hour. |
Refer to the on-line
tutorial. Note that long term simulations are often undertaken at
1 hour time steps, while simulations to test the robustness of some control
action might typically involve a short time step simulation over a single
day.
In the Project Manager, before you commission a simulation you have an option to pre-define many of the simulation options. This makes it easy to re-run an assessment or to run a series of assessments. Use the simulation presets option and define a winter spring and summer assessment, each with the simulation period, timestep and results files named. |
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2. Investigate the various results save levels. |
The amount of data to be saved during a simulation can be varied up or down to reduce the resulting file size, speed up the simulation or provide atypical information. The default save level will be adequate in most cases, it may be adjusted up, where intra-constructional temperatures etc are required, or down, where only temperature and plant flux are required. The save level can be preset in the simulation presets facilitiy or it can be set within the simulator. |
| 3. Study specialist simulation options. |
The options available under Simulation toggles allow adjustment of the parameters relating to the numerical solution and selection of alternative models for solar gain calculation etc. To avoid inappropriate use, invocation of these options is password protected. The password is 101. |
| 4. Investigate the trace option. |
The Trace facility allows the results of the simulator's computations to be displayed as they are made. This is useful where more information is required than is available from the standard output. |