SIMULATION MODEL FOR ENERGY PERFORMANCE AND USER COMFORT EVALUATION OF ATRIUM BUILDINGS

In recent years highly glazed spaces and atriums are seen as a sign of advanced technology. An atrium is the social center of a building where people gather for social activities and also is a significant element of passive building systems if designed properly to provide user requirements. Estimation of energy use and thermal performance is difficult because of the complex thermal phenomena occurred at the atrium space due to its large size and high solar gains through the fenestration. It is not easy to obtain comprehensive results for evaluating the performance of the atrium building with a single simulation program. This paper introduces a performance based model for energy use and user comfort evaluation of atrium buildings with the use of multiple building performance simulation tools; Window 5.2, EnergyPlus, Comis, Delight, Gambit and Fluent and the resulting outputs which support the methodology.