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A master's thesis from Aalborg University
Book cover


Occupancy and Weather: How These Influence Robustness and Building Design: Uncertainty study with stochastic building performance simulations

Translated title

Brugeradfærd og Vejr: Hvordan Disse Påvirker Robusthed og Bygnings Design: Usikkerhedsanalyse med stokastisk simuleringer af byningens ydeevne

Term

4. term

Publication year

2017

Submitted on

Pages

178

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to achieve better knowledge of how occupants and weather affect the predictions from building performance simulations. The influence of weather is evaluated based on robustness and design tendencies, while the occupancy modelling is evaluated on building performance and dimensional values. A series of weather files and methods to perform occupancy modelling are tested with factorial experiment. These are performed on either building performance simulation tool, Be15 and BSim, respectively. Based on a fictional office building, stochastic simulations were carried out with two simulation methods. The whole building is simulated in Be15, where the influence from including multiple historic weather files are compared with results from Design Reference Year. The design solutions were evaluated in terms of their robustness level towards weather files and the most important input parameters were identified through sensitivity analyses. Additionally the design tendencies that grants a desired building performance are studied. Furthermore, for a selected room modelled in BSim, the influence of using stochastically generated occupancy profiles were studied and compared to static occupancy profiles in terms of performance and system dimensioning. Tendencies that leads to deviations in the building performance and system dimensioning are outlined. Sensitivity analysis were conducted to identify the influence from variability of occupants and weather on the evaluated parameters.