Effects of architectural design variables on energy and environmental performance of office buildings

Identifier:  TDX:2377

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX2377

Authors:  Ordoñez García, Arturo

Abstract:
This thesis addresses the understanding of the effects that main architectural design variables have on energy, environmental and economic performance of office buildings, exploring some of the analytical methods that offer greater potential nowadays. It is aimed to contribute to the development of approaches, methods and tools that facilitate the decision-making during the architectural design processes, especially in the early stages. It is also aimed to generate information that helps to improve the criteria applied in the development of building energy codes and sustainability certifications. The research consisted of four major parts: • Development of a parametric project based on the programs EnergyPlus and jEPlus software. • Implementation of Optimization analysis by means of evolutionary algorithms. The analysis is performed with the program jEPlus+EA. • Application of two sensitivity analysis methods, Morris and Sobol, in order to investigate the relative importance of each architectural design variable. • Implementation of artificial neural networks to create meta-models that are able to predict, with reasonable accuracy, the energy, environmental and economic performance of buildings