Building performance simulation (BPS) is used routinely in design practice to evaluate the performance of candidate design solutions. However, two sources of uncertainty exist in the design process: in the selection of an optimum design solution; and in the predicted performance of the building (say, due to uncertain boundary conditions). These uncertainties can be evaluated and reduced through the use of an “explorative design” process, in which uncertainty quantification, multi-objective optimization, and sensitivity analysis are combined to provide information on the choice of robust and optimal design solutions. This paper investigates the use of an exhaustive search method to sample all combinations of design solutions and uncertain boundary conditions. The number of samples, and therefore the range of designs considered, are limited by the computation time of BPS. However, this paper concludes that design standards can be used to identify a viable range of design options, and that an exhaustive search applied to a limited design space provided enough information to identify and select robust design solutions. The paper also demonstrates the use of a new approach to identifying robust solutions that are guaranteed to remain optimal, regardless of the prevailing uncertainty in the boundary conditions.
Funding
This research is funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
History
School
Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Published in
Building Simulation and Optimization 2016
Citation
WRIGHT, J.A., NIKOLAIDOU, E. and HOPFE, C.J., 2016. Exhaustive search; does it have a role in explorative design? Presented at the Building Simulation and Optimization 2016: Third IBPSA - England Conference (BSO 2016), Newcastle, UK, 12-14th Sept.
Publisher
IBPSA
Version
AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Acceptance date
2016-05-04
Publication date
2016
Notes
This paper is in closed access until the conference has taken place.