Validating a Building Performance Simulation Model of a naturally ventilated Double Skin Facade

Abstract

Double Skin Facades (DSF) are regaining popularity as a way to increase the climate resilience of buildings. Building Performance Simulation (BPS) is commonly used for their assessment, but modelling DSFs with BPS is challenging due to their complex thermophysical behaviour. Several research works have evaluated the capabilities and limitations of BPS for modelling specific DSF configurations. This work presents a validation study based on experimental data from a full-scale naturally ventilated double-skin façade, compared against results from the BPS software IDA-ICE. The study found that in periods with low solar irradiation, the different modelling strategies had a minor influence on the results, with a high agreement between measurements and simulation. In contrast, periods with solar irradiation showed a higher sensitivity to the modelling strategy, with more significant deviations from the measurement results.