abstract: With the increasing interest in energy efficient building design, whole building energy simulation programs are increasingly employed in the design process to help architects and engineers determine which design alternatives save energy and are cost effective. DOE-2 is one of the most popular programs used by the building energy simulation community. eQUEST is a powerful graphic user interface for the DOE-2 engine. EnergyPlus is the newest generation simulation program under development by the U.S. Department of Energy which adds new modeling features beyond the DOE-2's capability. The new modeling capabilities of EnergyPlus make it possible to model new and complex building technologies which cannot be modeled by other whole building energy simulation programs. On the other hand, EnergyPlus models, especially with a large number of zones, run much slower than those of eQUEST. Both eQUEST and EnergyPlus offer their own set of advantages and disadvantages. The choice of which building simulation program should be used might vary in each case. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the potential of both the programs to do the whole building energy analysis and compare the results with the actual building energy performance. For this purpose the energy simulation of a fully functional building is done in eQUEST and EnergyPlus and the results were compared with utility data of the building to identify the degree of closeness with which simulation results match with the actual heat and energy flows in building. It was observed in this study that eQUEST is easy to use and quick in producing results that would especially help in the taking critical decisions during the design phase. On the other hand EnergyPlus aids in modeling complex systems, producing more accurate results, but consumes more time. The choice of simulation program might change depending on the usability and applicability of the program to our need in different phases of a building's lifecycle. Therefore, it makes sense if a common front end is designed for both these simulation programs thereby allowing the user to select either the DOE-2.2 engine or the EnergyPlus engine based upon the need in each particular case. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Architecture 2010

Les bâtiments existants reposent sur un équilibre stable qui assure leur durabilité. Toute exécution de travaux de réhabilitation qui déplace cet équilibre peut être à l'origine de désordres. En ce sens, les travaux peuvent être qualifiés de pathogènes. Dans le cadre de rénovations énergétiques, la problématique de l'humidité dans les bâtiments existants nécessite donc une attention particulière. Il convient donc de fournir aux acteurs de la construction des modèles de simulation du comportement hygrothemique global des bâtiments et d'évaluer les risques de pathologies liées à l'humidité. L'élaboration de ces modèles passent par la résolution de problèmes non-linéaires, de grande échelles spatiales et temporelles, et parfois paramétrique. Ils sont donc complexes à résoudre et les méthodes de réduction de modèle permettent de répondre à cette problématique. Deux techniques de réduction de modèles ont été explorées: la Décomposition Orthogonale Propre (POD) et la Décomposition Générale Propre (PGD). Elles ont été appliquées sur des problèmes de diffusion non-linéaire, couplée chaleur et humidité, dans les matériaux poreux. Ces deux méthodes ont été évaluées et comparées sur les critères de réduction du coût numérique de résolution du problème et sur la précision de calcul de la solution. Sur la base de ces analyses, la PGD a été retenue pour la suite des travaux. Grâce à ses caractéristiques, la méthode PGD présente plusieurs avantages d'ordre structurel, recensés dans la littérature. Au chapitre 3, nous avons utilisé ces prérogatives pour répondre aux problématiques de complexité des modèles de simulation des bâtiments. Notre intérêt s'est concentré sur la réduction de la complexité numérique de problèmes multi-dimensionnels, sur la globalisation de problèmes locaux et sur la création de méta-modèle ou solution PGD paramétrique. Plusieurs cas académiques ont été considérés pour illustrer ces propos. Nous avons traité des problèmes de transferts non-linéaires dans les matériaux poreux et des problèmes de transferts multizone dans un bâtiment. Enfin, la dernière partie des travaux est axée sur la construction d'un modèle global articulant des modèles réduits PGD. Deux modèles sont construits. Le premier couple un modèle réduit enveloppe PGD avec un modèle complet multizone. Ces travaux ont été réalisés dans le cadre d'une collaboration avec le laboratoire LST de l'université PUCPR de Curitiba, Brésil. Ce partenariat a permis de bénéficier du modèle reconnu et validé Domus pour la simulation des transferts multizones. Les nombreuses possibilités du logiciel ont pu être exploitées. Deux cas d'études sont abordés. Le premier concerne la résolution d'un problème paramétrique pour l'étude de scénarios de réhabilitation en fonction de la perméabilité à la vapeur de l'isolant. Le second porte sur la modélisation globale d'un bâtiment bi-zone intégrant une simulation bi-dimensionnelle d'un pont thermique. Il est possible d'élaborer un modèle global présentant une plus grande réduction de la complexité du problème que celui réalisé avec Domus. Le deuxième modèle couple donc un modèle réduit PGD pour le problème enveloppe et une solution PGD paramétrique pour le problème multizone. Les performances de ce modèle ont été discutées en terme de précision de calcul de la solution et d'économie numérique de résolution du problème. La pertinence des méthodes de réduction de modèle pour la simulation du comportement des bâtiments a été montrée. En particulier, la méthode PGD permet d'apporter une nouvelle approche de résolution ces problèmes. / Excessive levels of moisture in buildings may damage the construction quality. Moisture also has an effect on indoor air quality and thermal comfort of the occupants. Thus moisture is a possible source of disorders in buildings. It is therefore important to continue developing numerical models to simulate the global hygrothermal behaviour of buildings. To achieve this aim, it is necessary to solve non-linear problems, with high space and time scales, with fine discretisation and sometimes parametric. This mathematical problems are complex to solve. Thus model reduction techniques and efficient ways of numerical simulation are worth investigations. Two techniques were assessed : the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) and the Proper Generalised Decomposition (PGD). They were first applied on non-liner coupled heat and mass transfers in porous materials. Both were compared and evaluated carrying about the reduction of the cost of resolution and the precision of the solution computed. Following this analysis, the PGD was selected for our next investigations. Due to it representation, the PGD method has several interesting features, already reviewed in literature.Thus, chapter 3 proposed to illustrate this advantages on different issues of modelling buildings hygrothermal behaviours. We focused on the reduction of the complexity of multi-dimensional problems, on the globalisation of local problems and on building PGD parametric solution or meta-model. Several academic case study were considered to illustrate these points. We analysed non-linear heat and mass transfers in porous materials and multizone air building transfers. In last part, we elaborated a PGD reduced order model to perform whole building energy simulation. Two different models were built. The first one associates a PGD model for envelope problem and a large original model for multizone problem. This work was done during a collaboration with the LST laboratory, at PUCPR University, Curitiba, Brazil. The main interest was the benefits of using their validated and admitted model Domus for solving multizone problem. Two case study were analysed. The first one analyse a parametric problem for the study of the retrofitting a building in function of the vapour permeability of the insulating material. The second one focused on the whole building energy simulation of a two-zone building with 2-dimension transfers in the wall assembly. A second global PGD reduced order model was elaborated, with a higher reduction of the numerical complexity of the problem. This model associates a PGD model for solving envelope problem and a PGD parametric solution for the multizone problem. The performance of this model was analysed investigating the numerical gain and the precision of the solution computed. In conclusion, the relevance of reduction model techniques for performing whole building energy simulation was revealed. The PGD method contributes to a new approach for solving this problems.

Current designs of high performance buildings utilize hourly building energy simulations of complex, interacting systems. Such simulations need to quantify the benefits of numerous features including: thermal mass, HVAC systems and, in some cases, special features such as active and passive solar systems, photovoltaic systems, and lighting and daylighting systems. Unfortunately, many high performance buildings today do not perform the way they were simulated. One potential reason for this discrepancy is that designers using the simulation programs do not understand the analysis methods that the programs are based on and therefore they may have unreasonable expectations about the system performance or use. The purpose of this study is to trace the origins of a variety of simulation programs and the analysis methods used in the programs to analyze high performance buildings in the United States. Such an analysis is important to better understand the capabilities of the simulation programs so they can be used more accurately to simulate the performance of an intended design. The goal of this study is to help explain the origins of the analysis methods used in whole-building energy simulation, solar system analysis simulation or design, and lighting and daylighting analysis simulation programs. A comprehensive history diagram or genealogy chart, which resolves discrepancies between the diagrams of previous studies, has been provided to support the explanations for the above mentioned simulation programs.

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