Evaluation of the thermal performance of a Thermally Activated Building System (TABS) according to the thermal load in a residential building

Abstract

The objective of this study was to present a simulation study estimating the thermal comfort and energy consumption of a Thermally Activated Building System (TABS) combined with a Radiant Floor Heating System (RFHS) and Packaged Air Conditioning System (PAC) in a conventional residential building and low-thermal-load residential building. The two residential buildings with different envelope types were modeled using EnergyPlus. The applied system in each building can be classified as a current system which uses a Packaged Air Conditioning System (PAC) in the summer and a Radiant Floor Heating System (RFHS) in the winter. In this study, the proposed system for heating and cooling is a TABS combined with the current system.The effect of the thermal load according to the different building envelope types is revealed by estimating the thermal comfort and the energy consumption of the system applied in each building. The results indicate that TABS combined with current system is a thermally comfortable and energy efficient, especially for the low-thermal-load building. In a building with a low-thermal-load, TABS could decrease the operating hours and energy consumption of RFHS and PAC. TABS decreased both the heat source energy and the terminal energy by eliminating most of the thermal load with a high Load-Handled Ratio (LHR).