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An efficient sensitivity analysis for energy performance of building envelope: A continuous derivative based approach

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Abstract

Within the framework of building energy assessment, this article proposes to use a derivative based sensitivity analysis of heat transfer models in a building envelope. Two, global and local, estimators are obtained at low computational cost, to evaluate the influence of the parameters on the model outputs. Ranking of these estimators values allows to reduce the number of model unknown parameters by excluding non-significant parameters. A comparison with variance and regression-based methods is carried out and the results highlight the satisfactory accuracy of the continuous-based approach. Moreover, for the carried investigations the approach is 100 times faster compared to the variance-based methods. A case study applies the method to a real-world building wall. The sensitivity of the thermal loads to local or global variations of the wall thermal properties is investigated. Additionally, a case study of wall with window is analyzed.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partly funded by the “Conseil Savoie Mont Blanc” (CSMB) and the French Atomic and Alternative Energy Center (CEA). The authors also acknowledge the Junior Chair Research program “Building performance assessment, evaluation and enhancement” from the University of Savoie Mont Blanc in collaboration with the French Atomic and Alternative Energy Center (CEA) and Scientific and Technical Center for Buildings (CSTB). The authors also would like to acknowledge Dr. Denys Dutykh, Dr. Suelen Gasparin and Dr. Sergei Kucherenko for their valued discussions. Julien Berger contributed to this work while affiliated with the Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS, LOCIE, 73000 Chambéry, France, and finalized it at Laboratoire des Sciences de l’Ingénieur pour l’Environnement.

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Correspondence to Ainagul Jumabekova.

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Jumabekova, A., Berger, J. & Foucquier, A. An efficient sensitivity analysis for energy performance of building envelope: A continuous derivative based approach. Build. Simul. 14, 909–930 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-020-0712-4

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