Natural Light, Ventilation and Comfort

Study occupant comfort and ventilation quality based on building design, air conditioning and ventilation system performance. Optimize façade and shading design to enhance internal comfort, reduce unwanted solar heating loads and prevent glare problems.

Study lighting energy use with different types of energy efficient lights combined with sophisticated stepped or continuous lighting level controls incorporating daylight sensing. Optimize daylight harvesting techniques using hourly light level calculations, based on weather data and time of day, to determine how much electric lighting can be reduced .

Predict occupant comfort based on a choice of thermal comfort models which take into account air and radiant temperatures, relative humidity, metabolic rate, clothing and air velocity. Comfort data is reported to the ISO 770 Standard and can be used directly for Green Star IEQ-9 reporting.

Air Conditioning Systems

Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems can be modelled via an easy-to-use compact HVAC system option provided in DesignBuilder. This allows users to model many common systems including VAV with terminal reheat, Constant Air Volume, Packaged DX units and mechanical ventilation.

For more complex and advanced systems , DesignBuilder offers a powerful HVAC design module that integrates seamlessly with the main simulation package, giving the user access to a wide range of EnergyPlus HVAC system types. The user-friendly graphical environment makes it possible to model both air and water sides together in full detail with a good range of component types, including all ASHRAE 90.1 baseline types.

View the DesignBuilder v3 HVAC Simulation

Computational Fluid Dynamics

Both external and internal building analyses can be performed by using the DesignBuilder CFD module. This is a sophisticated but extremely user-friendly module that integrates seamlessly with the main simulation package.

Standard tools used for model creation are used to specify parameters and place different diffuser types, exhaust grilles, heating panels etc. Boundary conditions can be user specified or simply imported from a previous EnergyPlus simulation run.

This is ideal for studying external wind effects, natural ventilation, stack effect, thermal comfort and air change effectiveness. It is equally suited for advanced studies of displacement ventilation systems or specialized ventilation studies e.g. in hospital theatres. The powerful graphic output facility enables users to view data in a combination of vectors, contours, filled contours etc.

Age-of-Air contour data can be used directly for Green Star IEQ-2 air change effectiveness studies and reporting.