Test Cases

Ready-made building emulators

Test Case Name

multizone_office_complex_air

Brief Description

This test case represents a variable air volume (VAV) system that serves a typical high-rise office building (46,320 m2). The building is based on the U.S. DOE prototype building for a large commercial building and has 12 floors with five zones per floor. The VAV system contains 12 AHUs. Each AHU serves one floor and is connected to five VAV terminal boxes. Each AHU consists of a supply fan, a return fan, a cooling coil, and a mixing box. Each VAV terminal box serves one zone, adjusting the supply air flow rate via a damper and heating the supply air with a water-based reheat coil and modulating valve. The reheat coils are served by a boiler, while the cooling coils are served by three identical chillers.

When implementing this higher-fidelity building model, we employ both EnergyPlus and Modelica Buildings Library. Specifically, we modeled the building envelope and internal heat gain with EnergyPlus and modeled the VAV system and its associated control with Modelica Buildings Library. The data exchange between the EnergyPlus model and the Modelica model is realized via Spawn-of-EnergyPlus.

(Under Development)