Influence of Initial and Boundary Conditions on the Accuracy of the QUB Method to Determine the Overall Heat Loss Coefficient of a Building

Naveed Ahmad, Christian Ghiaus and Thimothée Thiery
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Naveed Ahmad: INSA-Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CETHIL, UMR5008, F-69621 Villeurbanne, France
Christian Ghiaus: INSA-Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CETHIL, UMR5008, F-69621 Villeurbanne, France
Thimothée Thiery: Saint-Gobain Research, 39 quai Lucien Lefranc, CEDEX 93303 Aubervilliers, France

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-24

Abstract: The quick U-building (QUB) method is used to measure the overall heat loss coefficient of buildings during one to two nights by applying heating power and by measuring the indoor and the outdoor temperatures. In this paper, the numerical model of a real house, previously validated on experimental data, is used to conduct several numerical QUB experiments. The results show that, to some extent, the accuracy of QUB method depends on the boundary conditions (solar radiation), initial conditions (initial power and temperature distribution in the walls) and on the design of QUB experiment (heating power and duration). QUB method shows robustness to variation in the value of the overall heat loss coefficient for which the experiment was designed and in the variation of optimum power for the QUB experiments. The variations in the QUB method results are smaller on cloudy than on sunny days, the error being reduced from about 10% to about 7%. A correction is proposed for the solar radiation absorbed by the wall that contributes to the evolution of air temperature during the heating phase.

Keywords: building performance measurement; short term test methods; overall heat loss coefficient; energy efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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