Script for visualizing heat loss from surfaces
I find myself in the need of a diagnostic for visualizing heat transfer through various surfaces either on a design day, monthly or annual basis.
Anybody else on this forum come across a similar need? Any open source solutions?
My solution reads in the following variables and identifies appropriate surfaces (walls, ceilings, windows, doors, etc) from the SQLite database. It's a python script.
'Surface Outside Face Conduction Heat Loss Rate [W]',
'Surface Outside Face Net Thermal Radiation Heat Gain Rate [W]',
'Surface Outside Face Convection Heat Gain Rate [W]',
'Zone Infiltration Total Heat Loss Energy [J]',
'Zone Infiltration Total Heat Gain Energy [J]',
'Surface Window Heat Loss Rate [W]', # Total heat transfer through window
The thing is I get strange results which I am not confident in. This could be due to several reasons such as not characterizing convective, conductive or radiative heat transfer in my outputs. Could be for other reasons.
Would like to compare solutions to others to build more confidence in these types of diagnostics.
Is ResultsViewer for visualizing heat gains or losses insufficient for your purposes ? In what respects ? Can you give examples of specific questions you would like to answer by visualization ?
I don't know of any open source solutions that can visualise the components of heat transfer in non-time series charts. Sounds you are making something like a Sankey diagram or similar, with the ability to step through simulation timesteps, checking the heat flow in and out of a zone. Sounds nice. I don't like the look of the variables you are using. 1) Joules vs Watts 2) outside face loss/gain versus Zone loss/gain. I suggest identifying output variables that must balance at each time step.