Building Performance and Simulation

This chapter emphasises on reasons behind building simulation and performance analysis, and provide a background on both advantages and disadvantages of using building performance and simulation for environmental analysis. Some of the learning outcomes anticipated as follow: thorough understanding of basic concepts of building performance simulation, develop the ability to apply these concepts in real life situations; understanding of the use of BPS and the need to use the appropriate software to answer a specific enquiry; understanding the relationships between the required outcome of a BPS exercise and the input details necessary to produce a valid answer. The idea behind this chapter is to provide a general knowledge of, and a basic ability to understand the use of building performance simulation, and to optimise the performance of different components used in buildings. Integration of renewable energy resources will also be addressed, e.g. solar and wind. The integrative effect of these components will also be studied.