Date

2013

Author

Çakıcı, Fatma Zehra

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Energy performance in buildings has become one of the most broadly debated subjects in contemporary architecture; and current legislation has emphasized its importance by requiring buildings to possess an energy performance certificate. Due to the technological advances in computational tools, it is possible to analyze the energy performance of buildings before construction starts; however most energy performance evaluation tools, requiring complex solid models and high technical knowledge in the field, can be used only during the post design phases. Since any design decision has an important effect on the energy performance of a building, evaluation tools should be used from the very beginning of the design process. In this dissertation, a building energy performance evaluation program, entitled the Energy performance Advisor (EnAd), was developed for evaluating the energy performance of buildings considering not only the legal framework of Turkey, but also the building design process. The program does not need advanced expertise, and was developed to be usable in any phase of the design process. The program, using the monthly calculation method of TS EN ISO 13790, was developed based on the European Union Directive on Energy Performance in Buildings (EPBD) and the current Turkish legislation on the subject. EnAd integrates the legal framework with the energy performance criterion into the building design process, while providing rapid feedback on energy performance and related legislation, and guiding the designer to improve design decisions. This dissertation has also shown the effects of building size, exposed surfaces, ventilation and infiltration, window-wall ratio, U-values, set-point temperatures and temperature differences between the outside and inside spaces on energy performance of buildings through generic case studies while searching the reasons for discrepancies between the results derived from the four evaluation tools, three of which is highly acknowledged energy performance evaluation tools. The validity, reliability, precision and usability of EnAd as a design-support tool has been proved through the usability and convergence tests conducted. Finally, the thesis has pointed out the importance of the use of energy performance evaluation tools from early stages of architectural design process to achieve higher performances as well as the roles of decision makers in this process.

Subject Keywords

Buildings, Buildings, Buildings, Sustainable buildings.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12615715/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/22600

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis