Paper Conference

Proceedings of SimBuild Conference 2012: 5th conference of IBPSA USA

     

Prioritizing Building System Energy Failure Modes Using Whole Building Energy Simulation

Kevin Otto, Bryan Eisenhower, Zheng O'Neill, Shui Yuan, Igor Mezic, Satish Narayanan
Robust Systems and Strategy, Taunton, MA
University of Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA
United Technologies Research Center, East Hartford, CT

Abstract: Building failure modes can be defined as the range of possible faults, mistuning, degradation and wear that can occur in building systems. They drive poor operational energy performance that can be achieved as compared to what was expected in design. If the more critical failure modes can be uncovered early in design, they can be mitigated through design changes or monitoring of associated characteristics on parameters such as temperatures, flow rates and pressures. To understand and prioritize failure modes, failures are characterized through mappings to whole building simulation input variables, and then random sampling methods are applied to simulate the building operating under combinations of different failure modes. Reduced order models are then fit to the resulting data to detemine which failure modes are more critical. The approach is demonstrated on a mid-sized office building, comparing a standard and advanced retrofit design.
Pages: 545 - 553
Paper:
simbuild2012_09a_1_Otto