ESP-r: building simulation
ESP-r: building simulation
Current capabilities
ESP-r capabilities for modelling buildings are as follows:
- non-steady, heat transfer, by conduction, convection,
advection, and radiation (long- and short-wave) within a multi-zone problem
with distributed capacity
- thermal zones are assumed to represent a volume of well mixed air and
are fully bounded by polygons and can be of arbirary geometric complexity, optionally with
internal mass represented by pairs of back-to-back surfaces.
- surfaces associated with thermal zones have attributes of construction
(thermophysical properties), name, boundary condition and geometry (a polygon of essentially
arbitrary complexity). Surfaces can also have electrical attributes (PV module)
or complex thermophysical attributes (phasse change materials).
In the case of partitions, each associated zone includes
a surface which takes its boundary condition from and exchanges flux with the
other zone surface.
- thermal zones have imposed on them casual gains, typcially from occupants, lighting and
small power - the sensible portion being convectively and radiantly distributed
- thermal zones are subject to control actions such as the injection/extraction of
heat from the air node or a node within a surface, changes in infiltration and/or
ventilation imposed by zone or flow controls, or substitution of thermophysical properties
- interaction with the HVAC, mosture flow, network
air flow, cfd, lighting and electrical power flow domains
- time varying thermophysical properties and time varying surface heat transfer
regimes
Primary routines
- simcon.F simulation clock and main controller
- bcfunc.F building-side control functions
- bmatsu.F establishes the system matrix equation
- bmatsv.F building-side equation solver
- casual.F establishes casual heat gains and applies controls to luminaires (calls Radiance)
- solar.F establishes internal and external solar flux distribution
- subsys.F support routines for longwave radiation, air flow
Issues arising
- refinement of algorithms
- inter-zone longwave radiation
- inter-zone shortwave radiation distribution
- additional analytical tests for validation work
- possible de-coupling of thermophysical interactions in the case
of longer timesteps
- real versus abstract controllers
Last edited April 2005