Análisis comparativo entre simulador ambiental en BIM Ecodesigner y DesignBuilder, comparando resultados obtenidos entre ellos, en parámetros de temperatura interior detectados y estos frente a la realidad

Abstract

The importance of reducing energy consumption in buildings has led to the use of software that can predict the thermal performance of a building by entering the location and construction data, nevertheless, this type of software has shown a discrepancy in the results compared to in situ measured thermal data, and this issue has not been sufficiently studied in climates close to the equator line, to investigate this difference and the configuration that can produce the most precise results, three classrooms buildings from the faculty of architecture of the university of Cuenca that are modeled in Design Builder and ArchiCAD are taken to simulate thermal comfort parameters, the same configuration is introduced in both software and the simulation of temperature and humidity were compared with the measured data. Analyzing the results allows us to determine the precision of the two software been placed in the same circumstances at the climate zone of Cuenca, Ecuador, for that, interior measurements are taken with temperature, humidity and 𝐶𝑂ଶ sensors, as well as exterior measurements using a weather station. The simulations´ results provided a comparison table where the average result can be used as a correction factor, for Design Builder’s case a ±0.81°C and 5% of mean absolute difference (MAE) was obtained for the temperature and humidity simulated and a ±0.91°C and 6.09% of difference for the temperature and humidity simulated in Ecodesigner STAR plug-in from ArchiCAD, this data is obtained after calibration which placed the ventilation for the brick buildings (E1 and E2) in 20ACH, 30ACH and 40ACH, and the insulated concrete block building (E3) a ventilation of 15 ACH within their respective occupancy and ventilation schedule. This research helps identify the parameters and variables that affect the thermal simulation results providing an analysis of the simulation software use, workflow and the results with a comparative vision, finally, the values obtained as a mean absolute error can be used as a correction.