ON INTER-MODEL COMPARISON EXERCISES OF WHOLE BUILDING HAM SIMULATION USING THE BESTEST BUILDING

This paper provides a discussion of the results of two inter-model comparison exercises from IEA-Annex 41, where combined heat and moisture transfer was calculated for three variations of the BESTEST building (based on cases 600 and 900 from IEA- ECBCS SHC-Task 12 / IEA-ECBCS Annex 21). Firstly, basic statistical techniques were used to post- process some results of IEA-ECBCS Annex 41, providing confidence intervals in accordance to a certain confidence level. Secondly, the role of moisture (as well as some aspects of the exercises, such as initialization and material properties) was analysed using recently developed and validated prototype software for the coupling of BES and BEHAM. The paper concludes that combined heat and moisture transfer has a minor influence in the temperature distribution, energy demand and peak power load in the three variations of the BESTEST building simulated. However, combined heat and moisture transfer has large influence on the indoor relative humidity of the BESTEST.