Design of a distributed simulation environment for building control applications based on systems engineering methodology

The analysis of innovative designs that distributes control to buildings over a network is currently a challenging task as exciting building performance simulation tools do not offer sufficient capabilities and the flexibility to fully respond to the full complexity of Automated Buildings (ABs). For that reason, this paper deals with the design and development of a middleware for distributed control and building performance simulations that has been carried out to study and analyze the impact of control systems on building performance applications (i.e., building indoor environments) over a network, rather than costly and time-consuming experiments. The paper also presents a model-based Systems Engineering (SE) methodology for development and design of distributed control and building performance simulations involving two or more different software tools over a network. The main objective of this framework is to run-time couple one or multiple building performance simulation tool(s) with a control modelling environment over a network in order to similarly represent Building Automation and Control Systems (BACS) architecture in a simulation.