Coupling effect of building design variables on building energy performance

Abstract

In this paper, the coupling effect of building design variables on building energy performance was studied by taking office in hot summer and cold winter zone as an example. The Latin hypercube method was introduced to sample the architectural design features under different combinations of 10 variables, and simultaneously, the simulations on energy consumption were conducted through Energyplus. The potential interaction effect between design variables were analysed by using treed Gaussian process. Meanwhile, the coupling effect of these variables was further analysed quantitatively by using interaction in linear regression. The study showed that the coupling effect of the design variables and their impact on energy consumption trends could not be revealed by ordinary linear regression. Besides, the influence of interactions between design variables on energy consumption needs to be taken into account. The coupling relationships were found amongst the windows' heat transfer coefficient, the window-to-wall ratio, and the air infiltration. Therefore, these parameters should be selected properly based on the features of energy consumption and coupling variables. Furthermore, it was recommended to consider summer heat insulation/dissipation when the window-to-wall ratio is large in this district, instead of strengthening heat preservation.