When used appropriately, building performance simulation has the potential to reduce the environmental impact of the built environment, to improve indoor quality and productivity, as well as to facilitate future innovation and technological progress in construction. Since publication of the first edition of Building Performance Simulation for Design and Operation, the discussion has shifted from a focus on software features to a new agenda, which centres on the effectiveness of building performance simulation in building life cycle processes. This new edition provides a unique and comprehensive overview of building performance simulation for the complete building life cycle from conception to demolition, and from a single building to district level. It contains new chapters on building information modelling, occupant behaviour modelling, urban physics modelling, urban building energy modelling and renewable energy systems modelling. This new edition keeps the same chapter structure throughout including learning objectives, chapter summaries and assignments. Moreover, the book: • Provides unique insights into the techniques of building performance modelling and simulation and their application to performance-based design and operation of buildings and the systems which service them. • Provides readers with the essential concepts of computational support of performance-based design and operation. • Provides examples of how to use building simulation techniques for practical design, management and operation, their limitations and future direction. It is primarily intended for building and systems designers and operators, and postgraduate architectural, environmental or mechanical engineering students.

Proceedings of a symposium held at BRE, Garston, on advances in the understanding of complex interactions of HVAC systems.

This book investigates the latest modeling and control technologies in the context of air-conditioning systems. Firstly, it introduces the state-space method for developing dynamic models of all components in a central air-conditioning system. The models are primarily nonlinear and based on the fundamental principle of energy and mass conservation, and are transformed into state-space form through linearization. The book goes on to describe and discuss the state-space models with the help of graph theory and the structure-matrix theory. Subsequently, virtual sensor calibration and virtual sensing methods (which are very useful for real system control) are illustrated together with a case study. Model-based predictive control and state-space feedback control are applied to air-conditioning systems to yield better local control, while the air-side synergic control scheme and a global optimization strategy based on the decomposition-coordination method are developed so as to achieve energy conservation in the central air-conditioning system. Lastly, control strategies for VAV systems including total air volume control and trim & response static pressure control are investigated in practice.