What is the most practical micro-climate model for examining the relationship between urban design parameters and outdoor thermal comfort (considering the effect of wind, mean radiant temperature and air temperature in calculating PET). I have found many softwares, I am not sure which would be the best for my research question. (Envi-met, Rayman, SOLWEIG, Townscope, Urbawind). Please share your experiences. Thank you.
Few years ago had an idea to explore couses of heat demand variation of low energy building - sound quite similar. At that time, main tools was equation based methods and dynamic building energy simulation tool EnergyPlus.
From my point of view, main factors are:
1. solar radiation - many tools have shading calculation options. EnergyPlus (I use OpenStudio) interface is quite good for dynamic solar radiation simulation and radiation penetration throu solid and glazed building envelope parts.
2. air movement around the building coused by wind. Most accure would be CFD simulation, but its time consuming to get correct results. I have some experience with IES VE software wich has MacroFlow module it is simplified CFD. Dont have validations proof, but results looks aceptable.
3. Air flow penetration to building - for this aspect CFD could be used but "flow network" simulation tools, like COMIS are computationaly cheap. Indoor air movement could be easily simulated when building leakage area and pressure coeficients for facade surfaces (C) are known.
4. Dynamic building model - steady state calculations sugested by building regulations (based on heat balance equation) are not suitable for short therm microclimate predictions in any case.
So in conclusion - if man thing is building micro climate conditions, why not take a look at building energy simulation software like DesignBuilder (interface for EnergyPlus with CFD option) or IES VE. Or hard way choise, with loots of options would be TRNSYS - with posibilities to integrate COMIS (flow network simulation) or DIY codes from Matlab/simulink...
By the way - in what climate conditions you are focused?
Thank you very much for the comprehensive information you provide here. I am looking into Australian context, where the climate is basically temperate. . Actually my study would not deal with buildings but urban areas.In the city scale there are unlimited number of variables affecting micro-climate and thermal performance of the city. I was looking for a software that can monitor most of the variables, and I think Envi-met can give me some clues somehow. I will explore the other possibilities during the next steps of my study.
Regards.
The answer to your question is not straightforward. Firstly the suitability of the software depends on you goals and abilities. RayMan is an accurate, user friendly, quick and well documented software. You can estimate lot of biometeorological parameters with RayMan such as PET, PMV, Tmrt etc. The calculations refers to a point.
Another reasonable choice is ENVImet. Using ENVImet you can calculate the spatial distribution of several parameters such as PMN, Ta, RH% etc. ENVImet requires high computer power and physical memory (RAM). The learning curve of this model is steep and the crash of the model is an everyday situation. But I think worth a chance.
SOLWEIG is a model based on MATLAB. It is steady and user friendly. It is accurate on radiation calculations.
To cut a long story short, my first choice is RayMan, after that is ENVImet and after that is SOLWEIG.
Best Regards
I.Ch
Chapter Urban Weather Generator: Physics-Based Microclimate Simulati...
If you feel comfortable with the Rhinoceros/Grasshopper environment, you might want to try out Eddy3D (https://www.eddy3d.com). It's aimed specifically at early design studies as opposed to the other great tools mentioned above.
Full disclosure: I am the lead developer of Eddy3D which is a part of my PhD project.
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