Coupling BIM and detailed modelica simulations of HVAC systems in a common data environment

Abstract

In current building design practices, the operation and performance of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems are rarely documented in detail. This is mainly caused by the manual burden of generating detailed HVAC simulation models. To lower the barrier for detailed HVAC simulations, this paper presents an automated toolchain that generates and simulates models in Modelica language utilizing building information structured in a web-based common data environment. This approach differs from previous approaches by its focus on HVAC systems and integration with a common data environment over file-based BIM, which increases interoperability and allows users to run simulation studies in the cloud. The tool successfully generated and simulated a model of the HVAC systems in a small building under ideal and faulty operation of the heating system and thus demonstrated a fully interoperable data exchange between a common data environment and a simulation environment while showcasing the potential of analyzing HVAC systems with Modelica.

Keywords:

• HVAC
• BIM
• simulation
• modelica
• digital twins
• common data environment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. The source code for the toolchain and the use case including the default mapping template is available in the public GitHub repository located at https://github.com/Virtual-Commissioning/VC-Modelica-Service/

Notes

1 https://github.com/Virtual-Commissioning/VC-Modelica-Service

2 Distributed on GitHub with the toolchain.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Innovation Fund Denmark under grant number 2040-00027B and 8090-00046B; the Ramboll Foundation under grant number 2022-068; Elforsk under grant number 352-042; and Interreg ÖKS under the project "Databaseret Energistyring i Offentlige Bygninger".