An Occupant-Oriented Calculation Method of Building Interior Cooling Load Design

Zhaoxia Wang, Yan Ding, Huiyan Deng, Fan Yang and Neng Zhu
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Zhaoxia Wang: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
Yan Ding: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
Huiyan Deng: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
Fan Yang: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
Neng Zhu: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 6, 1-29

Abstract: Given continued improvement in the thermal performance of building envelopes, interior disturbances caused by occupant behavior now have the greatest impact on building loads and energy consumption. The accurate calculation of interior load during design stage was emphasized in this paper, and a new method was proposed. Indoor occupants were considered as the core of interior disturbances, and the relationship with other interior disturbances was explored. The interior heat release was arbitrarily combined with the representative cooling load to be utilized in building cooling load calculation. Field surveys were conducted in three typical university buildings: an office building, a teaching building, and a library, located in a university in Tianjin, China. The oversized chillers supplying cooling for the buildings resulted from the over-estimating of the indoor occupant number and the power density of electric appliances. Through quantitative analysis, it was observed that the maximum representative interior loads were 196.43, 329.94, and 402.58 W/person, respectively, for the case buildings, at least 50% less than the empirical design data. Compared to the measured cooling load during the testing period, the accuracy of the modified cooling load was greater than 90%. This research is intended to serve as a reference for calculating and optimizing the design loads of cooling systems.

Keywords: load disturbances; representative interior load; consistency check; university buildings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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