Quoc Dang, Remy Mermelstein, and Christina X. Brown will present papers at SimBuild 2024.
Researchers from KPF’s Environmental Performance team presented two papers entitled “Early Design Thermal Comfort Modeling in Transient Conditions for Warming Hot Climates” and “Convex Partition Zoner: A New Algorithm for Automated Thermal Zoning” at the conference.
Taking place from May 21 to 23 in Denver, Colorado, SimBuild is an annual showcase of building performance simulation technology. This year, two groups of KPF environmental performance experts presented research papers at the conference. One demonstrates a new method for measuring how human beings perceive temperature as they move through the built environment, while the other introduces an algorithm to help more quickly model a building’s energy consumption.
Christina X. Brown, KPF Environmental Performance Specialist, Remy Mermelstein, KPF Environmental Performance Specialist, and Amber Jiayu Su, who interned with KPF’s Environmental Performance team, presented their paper “Early Design Thermal Comfort Modeling in Transient Conditions for Warming Hot Climates” in a technical session on Computational Fluid Dynamics, Airflow, and Microclimate. The paper implements a Dynamic Thermal Sensation–based thermal comfort analysis workflow to predict how occupants will feel as they move along a path through a design project in the hot, humid climate of Southeast Asia. While the majority of current analysis relies on steady state models, this research considers an occupant’s thermal history (such as whether they’ve recently been an air-conditioned environment) to paint a more accurate picture of how occupants will perceive temperature. This research has the potential to impact how architects implement cooling solutions for environments where people move between indoor and outdoor spaces.
In a poster presentation, Quoc Dang, KPF Environmental Performance Computation Specialist, and Jialiang Xiang, who interned with KPF’s Environmental Performance team, discussed their paper “Convex Partition Zoner: A New Algorithm for Automated Thermal Zoning.” The algorithm they devised utilizes an iterative process to automatically generate thermal zones of energy models from building floor geometries when the actual HVAC zones are unknown or not yet designed. The tool has the potential to enable designers to get a more accurate idea of a building’s energy performance earlier in the design process and could support urban-scale energy modeling.
Read more about SimBuild 2024 here.