3497 -- An Experimental Procedure for Deriving Z-Transfer Function Coefficients of a Building Envelope

The z-transfer function is used in calculations for HVAC system design and building energy consumption. Calculating methods to determine the z-transfer function coefficients, which characterise the dynamic thermal performance of building components, do exist, but these depend on a number of assumptions and one must supplement them with experimentally derived coefficients. Discusses the use of system identification techniques to derive the dynamic thermal response of building components using binary multi-frequency sequence (BMFS) signals. BMFS were implemented to determine the frequency response function of the system at multi-frequencies. The z-transfer function coefficients are obtained by applying multi-linear regression techniques to the frequency response. The z-transfer function coefficients also were obtained using least-squares regression in the time domain.

KEYWORDS: experiment, calculating, heat flow, building services, designing, energy consumption, thermal properties, performance, buildings, components