SysML Executable Model of an Energy Efficient House and Trade-Off Analysis

Abstract

With the growing complexity of energy efficient buildings, the methods of modeling and simulating such structures must account for monitoring several thousand design parameters across multiple diverse domains. As a result, modeling tools are now very specific to their respective domains and are growing more and more incongruous with each other. This calls for a way to integrate multiple modeling tools in the effort to create a single, large model capable to encapsulate data from multiple, different models. Thus, in this thesis, different methods to perform an integration with Systems Modeling Language (SysML) and a simulation tool were identified, described and evaluated. Then, a new method was developed and discussed. Finally, the new method was demonstrated by developing a SysML executable model of a simple two-room house that utilizes solar power for space heating, with a heat pump used as a backup. Using the Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) standard, the SysML model is integrated with a Modelica model, and a simulation is run in Simulink. Finally, a tradeoff analysis was performed for the purpose of design space exploration.