روش شناسي گزينش نرم افزارهاي كاربردي شبيه ساز انرژي در حوزه معماري

A Methodology for Selecting Applied Energy Simulation Tools in the Field of Architecture

درپي هشدارهاي ناشي از بحران انرژي، متخصصين حيطه هاي مرتبط با معماري نيز بايد رويكرد انرژي-كارايي را در تمامي مراحل فرآيند طراحي و ساخت مد نظر قرار دهند. از مهمترين ابزارهاي موثر در اين زمينه، شبيه سازي رايانه اي مصرف انرژي است. تحقيقات در مورد قابليت ابزارهاي شبيه سازي موجود، غالباً كلي بوده و بندرت پژوهش هايي در زمينه قابليت هاي مطلوب در حوزه معماري صورت گرفته است. در نوشتار حاضر، ابتدا شبيه سازي مصرف انرژي، حوزه هاي كاركردي آن و مشخصات نرم افزارهاي شبيه ساز مصرف انرژي بررسي شده و سپس نرم افزارهاي مذكور از نظر كارآيي در حوزه معماري بايكديگر مقايسه و ابزار منتخب، ارايه شده اند. در گام بعدي، با استفاده از نتايج پژوهش نظرسنجي جان هنسن و تحقيقي در رابطه با ميزان بهره گيري از اين ابزارها در مدارس معماري آمريكا، نرم افزارهاي پركاربرد استخراج گرديده است.و نهايتاً از تركيب نتايج در دو حيطه نظري و كاربردي، نرم افزارهاي برگزيده نهايي پژوهش معرفي شده اند.

Worldwide warnings emanated from the energy crisis of the 70th decade, made different communities seek solutions to overcome the problem. In this regard, the terms of energy saving as one of the main components of sustainable paradigm have become much more important. Since 30 to 40 percent of energy consumption is related to construction industry, energy efficiency in the scale of buildings and architecture is so determinative. As a result, these issues have to be well recognized by architects throughout the design process. Regarding the mentioned matter, one of the most important tools is computer simulation technology of energy consumption by the use of software. Simulation software as well as the other building software simultaneously provides designers with more appropriate strategies during the design process. These kinds of simulation undertake the time consuming and repetitive tasks to allow the users to evaluate more options and review them in order to achieve the optimum solution. Over the past 50 years, literally hundreds of building energy programs have been developed, enhanced and are in use. The core tools in the building energy field are the whole-building energy simulation programs, which provide users with key building performance indicators such as energy use and demand, temperature, humidity and costs. During that time, a number of comparative surveys of energy programs have been published. Due to the essence of architecture, it seems the reason which architects rarely use simulation technology during the design process is complexity for them as well as special skills requirement and also practical knowledge in dealing with such tools. Aim of this paper is to seek the capabilities of energy simulation programs in the field of architecture in such a way that the one meeting the most needs of architects as well as being helpful to them in designing can be finally introduced. So many studies have been done to provide comparison criteria and examine the capabilities of the existing simulation tools so far. But these researches haven’t included all aspects and also the desired capabilities in domain of architecture have been rarely considered. Therefore in the first step, the twenty outstanding simulation tools in the world are introduced. Through adaptive comparison using the information of software developer companies and a new version of the report presented in 2006 in cooperation with the University of Straus Clyde and Visconsin University in America and the U.S. Energy Department, five software candidates of the paper in terms of architectural capabilities have been selected. In the next step, the results of two researches have been used to introduce the most common simulation software among architects in practice. The first study done by John Hensen has shown a survey in which 50 architects have been asked about using simulation tools. In the second research, the use of such programs in the American architecture schools has been investigated. Finally in order to validating the paper findings through the combination of the results of theoretical and practical domains, the optimum energy simulation tools for architects are proposed.