Atrium in EnergyPlus

asked 2019-11-22 11:11:37 -0600

updated 2020-01-07 17:20:26 -0600

Hi, I want to model an atrium for a 4 storey building. The atrium is located in the centre of the building and in each floor there are rooms and corridors. I 've read in other threads that good practice is to use the ZONECROSSMIXING object. The examples I found are using this object to "connect" two thermal zones. In my case, since I have a 4-storey building I will have 4 zones to connect and calculate the temperature stratification. Is it better to divide the atrium into 4 virtual horizontal zones and use the ZONECROSSMIXING object or to use the AIRFLOWNETWORK:MULTIZONE:COMPONENT:HORIZONTALOPENING ? Which of these two objects will give a better representation of the temperature stratification. I am aware that the answer to my problem will be to perform CFD but it is not applicable in this case since we want to control to openings of the atrium, at the top floor, based on the temperature. Thank you in advance.

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answered 2019-11-22 13:17:05 -0600

Jason DeGraw

2208 ●6 ●10 https://github.com/jasondegraw

Neither of those options (AIRFLOWNETWORK:MULTIZONE:COMPONENT:HORIZONTALOPENING or ZONECROSSMIXING) will give you a result that is particularly meaningful in isolation. I'm not sure what you mean by "CFD but it is not applicable in this case since we want to control to openings of the atrium, at the top floor, based on the temperature", but for the mixing object you'll need flow rates and I've written more answers here than I care to think about on why AirflowNetwork is not a great choice for subdividing large volumes.

If you know what the flow rates are (not sure how that's possible without CFD) or you can determine the model parameters that AirflowNetwork will need (also not sure how that's possible without CFD) then either path could be made to work. But neither path will give you a result that you can be confident in without pre-simulation knowledge of what the flow patterns should look like (which should be available from CFD).