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Re: [EnergyPlus_Support] modeling of partial earth berm



This is a challenging feature to model.  I would agree that approach number 1 
is probably the best.  Or perhaps break it into two parts, one half with a 
thinner average soil thickness, and another for the lower thicker half of the 
berm.  You may run into problems modeling such a thick massive construction.  
Watch for loads initialiazation did not converge warnings and increase the 
number of warmup days (BUILDING object) if necessary.  And check results 
carefully to see that they seem reasonable.  I would also suggest creating a 
copy of the model without the berm and comparing results to see if trends seem 
reasonable.

Mike

p.s.  You might want to ask the modelers on bldg-sim a general question about 
how they approach modeling earth berms.  If you are not familiar with bldg-sim, 
please see http://www.gard.com/ml/bldg-sim.htm

On 10 Oct 2007 at 21:35, josh_miarch wrote:

> I'm modeling a school that has a small earth berm around most of its
> perimeter. The berm is 1m high at the outside wall, and slopes down at
> about 15° until it reaches grade about 3.75m from the wall. I have two
> ideas as to how to best model this:
> 
> 1. Create a "soil" material and that has a thickness of 1.875m
> (3.5m/2) so that when applied onto a surface that is 1m high, it will
> have the same volume per unit wall-length as the berm. Use this as the
> outermost material in the construction for a surface that covers the
> bottom 1m of the exterior wall.
> 
> 2. Use the basement pre-processor and model the building as basically
> sitting in a 1m deep basement. 
> 
> Which of these approaches should I use (I'm leaning towards #1...)?
> Should I even bother modeling this? Any assistance anyone could give
> me would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Josh
> 
> 
> 
> Josh Kjenner, EIT, LEED AP
> Manasc Isaac Architects Ltd.
> 10225 100 Avenue :: Edmonton, AB T5J 0A1
> 780.429.3977
> 
> 
> 
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> 
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> 
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> 
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> 


========================================================
Michael J. Witte, GARD Analytics, Inc.
EnergyPlus Testing and Support      
EnergyPlus-Support@xxxxxxxx





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