DEVELOPING A NOVEL FRAMEWORK FOR BIM-ENABLED PARAMETRIC MODELLING AND BUILDING ENERGY SIMULATION

Abstract

With increasing concern of climate change and sustainability in the built environment, there is an urgent need to find ways to maximise energy conservation in buildings. In recent years, the development of BIM-based method coupled with Building Energy Modelling (BEM) software analysis has seen a rapid growth in the industry adoption for optimization of building performance and energy efficiency, especially during the designs phase. With the exchange of information between the two software, the interoperability issue during data transfer remains constantly in question. Despite growing research and the advancement in the facilitation of information exchange between BIM and BEM software, there are certainly still uncovered areas for research to better improve the interoperability to enable a seamless data transfer between the two software. This study aims to develop a novel framework for BIM-enabled parametric modelling and building energy simulation. It focuses on examining the applicability of the BIM based method of a parametric modelling and energy simulation software in exploring the factors affecting energy consumption in buildings and its different utilization. Influencing factors for energy conservation are identified and parametric 3D-BIM model of the building is built and transferred into energy simulation software for energy analysis. The result of the simulation shows that energy consumption in both residential use and mixed-use (residential and retail) peaks around May to September and hit the lowest during December to February. The two sets of simulation results are then compared to identify cooling, lighting and miscellaneous equipment as the main factors that drives the difference in energy consumption between different building usage type. After which, the mixed-use model is set into different orientations of azimuth solar angle at 0°, 45°, 90°, 180°, 225°, 270°, and 315° which reveals that 180° is the most ideal building orientation design as it gives the most optimum energy consumption. With results showing alignment with current literature reviews, it can be concluded that the newly proposed BIM-based framework is applicable in providing insightful sets of analysis which could be extended for applications in other buildings use for future research.