Short time step heat flow calculation of building constructions based on frequency-domain regression method

Short time step heat flow calculation of building constructions is often needed for practical applications. Conventional methods such as state-space method and root-finding method may produce unstable conduction transfer function (CTF) coefficients at short time steps, and thus result in unstable heat flow calculation through building constructions. Frequency-domain regression (FDR) method is a newly developed method for computing CTF coefficients efficiently by representing the real building construction system with equivalent polynomial s-transfer functions. Previous studies on this method mainly addressed CTF coefficients at the conventional time step of 3600 s and the performance of heat flow calculation using these coefficients. This paper presents the investigation on the performance of CTF coefficients at various short time steps based on FDR method, and the performance of the heat flow calculation using these coefficients. The results show that FDR method can produce stable CTF coefficients at various time steps for most building constructions, and the calculated heat flows using these coefficients are of high accuracy. (C) 2009 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.