IES-VE User Forum

Hi,
I am undertaking a thermal comfort assessment of a library building under different occupancy patterns.

As I am a beginner to IES-VE I have been unable to find out whether the components modeled with the component modeler and inserted into ModelIt affect the volume of the room.

My problem is that I have large open desk spaces within the library combined with swathes of bookshelves full of books, which of coarse has a significant effect on the air volume contained within the space, thus affecting air change rates

Can anyone confirm this? If it doesn't take this into account, is there a way to more accurately model the volume that the bookshelves take up?

Many thanks

Leighton

Hi Leighton,

Welcome.

No the components you place in the model won't subtract from the air volume that Apache uses to represent the room so you might want to adapt the air exchanges or other settings you specify based on this. You could draw in some dummy spaces to represent the book shelves if you want and assign them a thick construction material to have some thermal mass represented there as well as deducting from the volume and floor area, another option you have that is commonly used for representing something like this in the thermal model would be to utilise the Furniture Mass Factor that is an input in the Room Conditions tab of room data (but would not require you to draw in any additional geometry)

Phil

Phil,
Fantastic thank you for your fast response.
I have a read a little into the furniture mass factor in the available guides.

It seems a useful addition to include as it directly links to the thermal capacity of the room, however I am apprehensive to use it due to the fact that it seems slightly ambiguous in its application.

I know that a furniture mass factor of 0 means that it ignores furniture altogether, but what would a furniture mass factor of 1 (default) correlate to, with regards to bookshelves in a large space? Can this mass factor go any higher than 1, to relate to a room full of furniture?

Many thanks

Leighton