Standard 140 specifies a method of test for evaluating thetechnical capabilities and applicability of software used in calculating thethermal performance of buildings and their HVAC systems. These test procedurescan be used to identify and diagnose predictive differences from building performancesimulation software that may be caused by algorithmic differences, modelinglimitations, faulty coding, inadequate documentation, or input errors; theprocedures can also be used to evaluate the acceptability of software.

The current set of tests focuses on building thermalenvelope and fabric loads and HVAC equipment performance, and includes

1. comparative tests, in which a program's results may becompared to a different version of itself or to the results of other programs,and

2. analytical verification tests, in which a program'sresults may be compared to analytical, quasi-analytical, or verified numericalmodel solutions.

This procedure tests software over a broad range ofparametric interactions and for a number of different output types, thusminimizing the concealment of algorithmic differences by compensating errors.Different building performance simulation programs, representing differentdegrees of modeling complexity, can be tested. However, some of the tests maybe incompatible with some building performance simulation programs.

The revised 2020 edition of Standard 140 includes all thetest cases of Standard 140-2017 and updates the building thermal fabric loadtests of Sections 5.2.1, 5.2.2, 5.2.3, and related sections.

The 2020 edition includes online access to electronicsupporting files. The following software may be required to view some files:Microsoft Windows® ∙ Microsoft Word® ∙ Microsoft Excel® ∙ Microsoft Notepad® ∙Adobe Reader®