Engineer, Ph.D. Student, Università degli Studi di Trieste
Roberta Padovan is a construction engineer, currently Ph.D. student. The context of the Ph.D. course is the rational use of energy for civil and industrial buildings. She trained in the buildings-integrated simulation at the Strathclyde University - Glasgow (UK). She has been engaged in the study of models for the phase change within the thermal storage. Her research topics are the modeling, simulation and optimization of storage tanks for low energy buildings. In the context of the sustainable construction she is qualified as Certified Passive House Designer.
Speeches
Optimization is an efficient tool in the engineering design: this presentation is aimed to show two possible usages of the modeFRONTIER tool. It will be shown the use of modeFRONTIER coupled with a simulation tool. On one side it will be presented the optimization of a system; on the other side it will be exposed a method for the parameters identification.
The presented study refers to the construction sector. The general objective of the research is to enhance the efficiency of a Solar Domestic Hot Water (SDHW) system. As prescribed by the European law within energy, such systems are typical in the current dwellings, since they represent a simple available solution for a rational use of energy. They exploit the solar renewable sources and stores energy by means of water tanks.
To carry out this analysis, modeFrontier has been coupled with the simulation software ESP-r, an open source code for the integrated simulation of buildings and plants. The first issue of the study is the optimization of the SDHW system performance. In particular, the optimization pointed out the best results obtained for the simulated tank solutions. The best tanks are the solutions that, at equal gross volume, reduce the primary energy consumption, and those which, at equal fuel consumption, show a lower gross volume.
The choice of the primary energy as optimization objective is the design target recommended by law; the gross volume minimization is a design target, since an efficient storage device occupies a great amount of space. The analyzed tanks are PCM enhanced and the results have been compared with the base case sensible tank.
The second application of the optimization tool is the parameters identification for a given problem: if a design variable is unknown and the simulation result is known, for example from experimental data: it is possible to point out the correct value for that variable, working as an inverse problem.
