Development of a simulation tool for Duco Ventilation & Sun Control

In 2012 Duco Ventilation & Sun Control looked for support for the integration of its (new) ventilation components in an automatic natural/hybrid ventilation system. The company questioned in particular the dimensioning and the control of the components.

Duco contacted engineering company Ingenium and the research group Building Physics, Construction and Services to develop a tool by which the dimensions of the components can be determined and their performance can be evaluated. Kim Goethals suggested to develop coupled thermal and ventilation models of typical solutions and worked out the proposal together with Floor Anseeuw of Ingenium. The resulting tool enabled to simulate, with the aid of the coupled TRNSYS-TRNFLOW model, the impact of a number of environment, building, system and usage characteristics on the performance of night ventilation by single-sided, cross or stack ventilation.