Modelling the thermal performance of buildings
(J Boland, and
T Tran) The research in the field of modelling the thermal performance of dwellings focuses on the simplification of the differential equations describing heat flows in houses to aid in their solution.
The system of equations is complex, given that one is dealing with a situation which is intrinsically non-linear. This is because it is an interconnected system of feedback loops, which is temporally and spatially dependent, implying the use of partial differential equations. The simplification involves working on the equations of the system themselves and also simplifying the problem through finding approximations for the construction of the synthetic weather data that comprise the inputs to the system.
The time series analysis of climatic variables focuses on determining the degree of complexity necessary for data used in modelling the thermal performance of buildings. This results in substantial simplification of the model. This procedure is being extended to solar hot water heater and photovoltaic cell performance modelling.