Investigation of the energy flows for transparent and nontransparent building facade

Abstract

Based on extensive measurements of energy usage for a variety of building facades, a computer model has been developed for calculating in advance the heating and cooling requirements of test rooms equipped with arbitrary facades. To simplify the predictive calculation, the three-dimensional physical model was transformed to a one-dimensional, linear, computational model. The computer model uses the results of an earlier sensitivity analysis. This permits the precise numerical modeling of the measured results and gives special value to the adaptation of this model for describing the geometric and thermal relations investigated experimentally. The results of the numerical calculations are found to be in good agreement with the measurements for six test rooms. This agreement justifies the linear numerical model and the computer program for predicting the energy flows in different room structures. Further, the computer model not only provides results which follow the course of weather conditions for the test year but yields results as well for a Standard Reference Year for the region.