Validation of external BES-CFD coupling by inter-model comparison

Conflation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and building energy simulation (BES) has been used in recent years in order to improve the estimation of surface coefficients for studies on thermal comfort, mold growth and other performance aspects of a building. BES can provide more realistic boundary conditions for CFD, while CFD can provide higher resolution modelling of flow patterns within air volumes and convective heat transfer coefficients (CHTC) for BES. BES and CFD can be internally or externally coupled. Internal coupling is the traditional way of expanding software by which the code is expanded by adding new modules and it entails a lot of effort in terms of debugging, maintenance etc. On the other hand, by external coupling different existing numerical packages work together, using the latest advances already implemented in them.This paper focuses on the validation of a newly developed prototype performing the external coupling of BES and CFD. The validation procedure involves an inter-model comparison between a conjugate heat transfer model and the prototype.