[Bldg-sim] sources for material libraries

[Macumber, Daniel]

Hey Christoph, OpenStudio has tried to address some of this issue in the online Building Component Library (BCL) at bcl.nrel.gov.  This database includes a variety of material and construction definitions used for energy simulation.  The components on BCL are organized into a taxonomy and include machine readable attributes to support searching.  The materials and constructions also come with premade IDF and OSM payloads so they can easily be included in EnergyPlus simulations.  Rob and I have talked several times about adding content for other simulation engines to (e.g. BSDFs for fenestration constructions to use in Radiance) but we haven't done this yet.  Components (and Measures) in the BCL can be made publically available or can be private to an individual user or group. Finally, the BCL has an API that software tools can use to automatically search, download, and upload components.  The OpenStudio API has methods for interacting with the BCL API, the OpenStudio applications use this to allow for searching and downloading measures and components directly in the OpenStudio GUIs.

Materials:
https://bcl.nrel.gov/search/site?f[0]=im_field_component_tags%3A157<https://bcl.nrel.gov/search/site?f%5b0%5d=im_field_component_tags%3A157>

Example Material (Brick):
https://bcl.nrel.gov/node/34420

Constructions:
https://bcl.nrel.gov/search/site?f[0]=im_field_component_tags%3A127<https://bcl.nrel.gov/search/site?f%5b0%5d=im_field_component_tags%3A127>

Example Construction (189.1-2009 Nonres 1A Exterior Mass Wall):
https://bcl.nrel.gov/node/2930

BCL API:
https://bcl.nrel.gov/developer

The BCL doesn't really provide guidance on what constructions and materials to use, it is more about providing a common place to store these things and an API to make them accessible.  There is a rating system so users can vote for their favorite components.

Just let us know if you'd like to know any more,
Dan

From: bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org [mailto:bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] On Behalf Of Christoph Reinhart
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2014 8:49 PM
To: bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org
Subject: [Bldg-sim] sources for material libraries

Dear colleagues,

We are currently assembling a material library as a basis for energy simulations and the question came up which source we should use to describe the various thermal and optical properties of  typical construction materials? A natural answer seems to be to use the ASHRAE Handbook of Fundamentals 2009 Chapter 26 which lists such numbers. Are these the tables that "all" of you are using or am I missing an important resource? What about our Canadian, European and other international friends? Would you scorn at an ASHRAE library and rather use your own numbers? This data input is obviously tedious so we want to avoid having to do repeatedly.

All the best,

Christoph


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