Building Performance Simulation – A Multicriteria analysis of the Indoor Environmental Quality of the HIEQ laboratory

This Master Thesis work consists in performing a multicriteria analysis of the indoor environmental quality of an experimental facility for IEQ testing. The facility, which stands for “Health Indoor Environmental Quality Lab”, wants to be in line with already built experimental prototypes used in the analysis for researched-based indoor quality studies. Whether the laboratory will host real life tests, its construction systems and flexibility make it interesting for the application of computer simulation software. Building Performance simulation has supported a parametric study to address various problematics and objectives, offering a parallel research to on-field application. Despite the latter’s wide range of study, by iteratively using and changing different input parameters, simulation can lay out specific findings among multiple scenarios. In this work, different input lead to different outputs according to some environmental quality aspects, such as thermal comfort, daylight and glare. These very aspects are also placed together to find common design strategies with the aim of solving discomfort issues across multiple domains. After a brief climate analysis based on Turin Typical Meteorological Year data (TMY), simulations are displayed according to different configurations: a) a baseline configuration in free-running mode; b) a baseline configuration conditioned by means of HVAC system; c) the baseline configuration b) with improved glass specification; d) the baseline configuration b) with an external dynamic shading; e) the baseline configuration b) with an external optimised fixed shading. Simulations follows similar steps, from main thermal analysis, displaying annual plotting of over-heated, comfort and under-heated %, to some of the principal daylight indexes, such as Daylight Autonomy, Spatial Daylight Autonomy and Useful Daylight illuminance. This work also provides a simplified evaluation of spatial glare. Eventually, baseline results indicate high quantity of overheating during spring and summer time. Moreover, exceeding illuminance and DGP are measured. Modification of glass properties for sun control and application of shadings lead to reduction in overheating, especially in case of fixed shading application, parallel to increase of under-heated % hours, with Thermal Comfort still being in the similar range. Yet, a sensible degree of delta in summer Overheated hours is found. Daylight results depict more effective changes towards acceptable conditions. Energy consumptions vary according to the four different scenarios. Baseline case presents higher values in cooling vs. heating. This trend inverts in the other three cases (new glass, dynamic shading and fixed shading). Electrical Lighting consumptions in baseline case are the lowest among all scenarios, whereas Dynamic shading is the one with the best results in terms of indoor comfort levels. Overall, the configuration with improved glass specification, results in the lowest global energy uses.