Integrated performance optimization of industrial buildings in relation to thermal comfort and energy consumption: A case study in hot summer and cold winter climate

Abstract

In the context of environmental protection, researches on thermal performance of buildings represent a growing field, most of which use a variety of linked calculating algorithms to maximize performance metrics. However, previous studies have done little to investigated in balancing energy consumption and indoor thermal comfort of industrial buildings. With various combinations of architecture design parameters, this paper aims to optimize the comprehensive thermal performance of clean plants. Matlab software was used for data preparation, deployment, and sampling. Two thousand simulations based on the different combinations were performed using Monte Carlo technique. The most appropriate combinations of sensitive factors were then analyzed to offer a reference for the architecture design, with the uncertainties of the original alternative parameters being substituted by mathematical statistics and data filtering. The result shows that the total thermal discomfort hours (TTD) increase by 14.95% and the total energy consumption (TEC) increases by 35.19% when the heating setpoint temperature is raised from 14 °C to 24 °C. The TTD increase by 3.93% and the TEC decreases by 21.68% when the cooling setpoint temperature is raised from 20 °C to 28 °C, respectively. The findings can contribute to understanding of the parameter combinations enhancing the comprehensive thermal performance of industrial buildings.