Correlation analysis of building plane and energy consumption of high-rise office building in cold zone of China

Abstract

With the rapid growth of high-rise office buildings in China, the huge energy consumption of these buildings has become a concern recently. While much research is focused on the HVAC system efficiency, there is little study on the association between building plane and energy consumption from the perspective of passive building design priority. In this study, 8 cases of typical high-rise office building plane in 6 categories are established in the city of Beijing, which is located in cold climate zone of China, and the annual dynamic load and energy consumption are calculated using the Design Builder software. The correlation between plane and energy consumption was studied based on the analysis of several key related factors. They are functional area ratio, shape coefficient, plane functional depth, traffic space arrangement, large atrium and natural lighting. The results show that, compared to total floor area, energy consumption per functional area is a more applicable index to evaluate building plane efficiency and energy consumption level across different design schemes. Influences of shape coefficient on energy consumption are mainly in envelope load. Compared with building depth, functional depth has a higher correlation with energy consumption. It is positively correlated with lighting energy consumption, and negatively correlated with envelope load. Traffic space arrangement mainly affects lighting, solar heat gain and envelope load, while its influences on total energy consumption need to be considered comprehensively. Our simulation results show that the differences of energy consumption across all the cases can be up to 17%, and a linear plane with a traffic space arranged in the north has the lowest energy consumption.