.Buildings.ThermalZones.Detailed.UsersGuide

Information

The package Buildings.ThermalZones.Detailed contains models for heat transfer through the building envelope. Multiple instances of these models can be connected to create a multi-zone building model. To compute the air exchange between rooms and between a room and the exterior, the room models can be connected to multi-zone air exchange models from the package Buildings.Airflow. The room models can also be linked to models of HVAC systems that are composed of the components in the package Buildings.Fluid.

There are two different room models, one assumes the room air to be completely mixed, and the other implements a computuational fluid dynamic model to compute air flow, temperature and species distribution inside the room. These models are further described in their respective user's guide, Buildings.ThermalZones.Detailed.UsersGuide.MixedAir and Buildings.ThermalZones.Detailed.UsersGuide.CFD.

Modeling of conventional and electrochromic windows

Both models have the option of modeling electrochromic windows. The window properties are specified in a record Buildings.HeatTransfer.Data.GlazingSystems which contains for the glass layer the record Buildings.HeatTransfer.Data.Glasses. If any glass layer has multiple properties, then the glass is assumed to be controllable, and the room model will have an input connector uWin that is used for the control input signal of the glass. This connnector is a vector in which each element is a control signal, with value between 0 and 1, for a particular window. Hence, either all or none of the windows must be electrochromic. (If your room has a mixture of conventional and electrochromic windows, then set all windows to be electrochromic, but simply use a constant control signal for the conventional windows, and set it to the off-state.) If all windows are conventional, then the connector uWin is removed. However, its icon may still be visible as the visual rendering engine may not evaluate the equations that are needed to determine whether there are controllable windows.

The model Buildings.ThermalZones.Detailed.Examples.ElectroChromicWindow shows how to configure electrochromic windows.

Experimental settings

Both models have the option to time sample the heat transfer calculation. Setting the parameter sampleModel samples the radiative heat transfer with a sampling time of 2 minutes. This can give shorter simulation time if there is already a time sampling in the system model. This option is experimental and may be changed or removed in future versions.

Contents

Name	Description
MixedAir	Room model with instantaneously mixed air
CFD	Room model with air heat and mass balance computed using Computational Fluid Dynamics