Passive design optimization of newly-built residential buildings in Shanghai for improving indoor thermal comfort while reducing building energy demand
Journal article, 2018

The objective of this paper is to optimize the passive design of newly-built residential buildings in hot summer and cold winter region of China for improving indoor thermal comfort while reducing building energy demand. In this respect, this paper investigates the performance of a representative apartment building in the city of Shanghai and evaluates the optimum solutions by using a developed optimization approach, which includes three major steps of 1) setting the model for multi-objective optimization, 2) sensitivity analysis for reducing the dimension of input variables, and 3) multi-objective optimization by using the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) coupled with the Artificial Neural Network (ANN), among which a novel indicator for evaluating the annual indoor thermal comfort of residential buildings of Shanghai named Comfort Time Ratio (CTR) is defined based on the modification of Szokolay's theory in terms of bioclimatic analysis, and the impacts of passive design variables on the indoor thermal comfort and building energy demand in terms of different directions are comprehensively investigated. Results of the multi-objective optimization indicate that the residential buildings of Shanghai have a great potential in comfort-improvement and energy-saving. A series of novel optimal passive design tactics for residential buildings in Shanghai are derived accordingly which could be easily understood and conveniently carried out by the architects in practice.

Multi-objective optimization

Passive design

Artificial neural network

Genetic algorithm

Thermal comfort

Residential buildings

Energy demand

Author

Shaoqing Gou

Tongji University

Vahid Nik

Lund University

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Building Technology

J. L. Scartezzini

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)

Qun Zhao

Tongji University

Zhengrong Li

Tongji University

Energy and Buildings

0378-7788 (ISSN)

Vol. 169 484-506

Subject Categories

Construction Management

Energy Systems

Building Technologies

DOI

10.1016/j.enbuild.2017.09.095

More information

Latest update

9/17/2018