Acausal equation-based and object-oriented modeling of heating systems: The College Thermal library

Abstract

With the growing demand for adequate thermal comfort and increasingly sophisticated and interconnected energy systems, software tools able to easily and effectively study complex thermal systems need to be developed. Here, a novel acausal equation-based and object-oriented modeling (OOM) approach is used to model the seasonal performance of a residential heating system taken as a case study. To this end, a purpose-built library named College Thermal was developed using Modelica language in the Wolfram System Modeler simulation environment. In detail, dynamic simulations under varying operating conditions were performed to assess the ability of the system to ensure the design conditions, and to estimate the resulting energy consumption during the heating season. Then, the effect of key parameters of the thermal components on the overall energy performance of the system is analyzed. The developed OOM library, which is characterized by interoperability, modularity, and scalability features and thus could easily incorporate extensions/evolutions of the studied system, would be prospectively suitable for optimizing system layouts and testing control strategies in various thermal engineering applications.