[Bldg-sim] Where should you choose your wall location for simulations, inside, outside or center of wall

[Ryan Del Balso]

Are there standard practice recommendations for where to place your wall
for a simulation?  Knowing every wall has thickness, but the simulation
engines are generally just using no thickness walls with a calculated
U/R value, where should you define your walls for the simulation?
Should they be defined at the exterior face of the wall, the interior
face or the center of the wall.  It seems the exterior face can greatly
increase the zone volume, thus incorrectly determining the energy usage,
but the interior face underestimates the exterior exposure of the wall.
The center of wall seems a good compromise, but is difficult to identify
and draw.  

 

For interior walls/zone delineation the same question applies.  From an
energy standpoint is it better to place the zone boundary on the face of
the higher load zone or the lower load zone or split the difference?

Thanks for any advice or direction to standard practices.

 

 

 

 

Ryan Del Balso

Building Performance Engineer II

ryan at ambient-e.com

130 W. 5th Avenue, Denver, CO 80204 

t 303.278.1532x210 | f 303.278.8533 |

ambient-e.com <http://www.ambient-e.com/> 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.onebuilding.org/pipermail/bldg-sim-onebuilding.org/attachments/20090911/b45e6a68/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 4935 bytes
Desc: image001.jpg
URL: <http://lists.onebuilding.org/pipermail/bldg-sim-onebuilding.org/attachments/20090911/b45e6a68/attachment.jpeg>