Outdoor Air Transfer in Zone air heat balance

asked 2020-06-24 05:01:28 -0600

BaptisteDE's avatar

updated 2020-08-16 16:29:29 -0600

Hi,

Like a number of persons before me, I am trying to understand the zone air energy balance. I have some trouble to understand the Zone Air Heat Balance Outdoor Air Transfer Rate output.

According to the documentation : "It is the sum, in watts, of heat transferred to the zone air from all the transfers of air from the out side, such as infiltration"

The output is 0 when no "Zone Airflow" objects are declared

When I add "ZoneInfiltration:DesignFlowrate" or "ZoneVentilation:DesignFlowRate" (or both), the output is not null.

I was expecting :

Zone Air Heat Balance Outdoor Air Transfer Rate = Infiltration Total Heat Gain - Infiltration Total Heat Loss + Ventilation Total Heat Gain - Ventilation Total Heat Loss

(With Infiltration and Ventialtion converted in the appropriate unit and timestep)

However, I get variable and sometime strong difference that I can't explain :

  • I cannot relate it to anything (schedule, temperature, etc.)
  • The mean difference is not null
  • The relative difference seems to be smaller with large ventilation flowrate

Do you know what I am missing ?

Thank you !

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Comments

@BaptisteDE could you share the IDF using a link to Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.?

Aaron Boranian's avatar Aaron Boranian  ( 2020-06-24 08:46:05 -0600 )edit

Thank you for your help ! Here is a link to a simple idf file : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I2th...

It is an old version of energyplus (8.3), but I get the same results with recent versions (9.2) or more complex models

BaptisteDE's avatar BaptisteDE  ( 2020-06-24 09:18:20 -0600 )edit