Hevacomp is a leading UK-based building services software house; their design software is used by 70% of the medium to large consulting engineers in the UK, with a user base of 3000 sites world-wide.  Hevacomp provides a range of building services software, including heating and cooling loads, energy, pipe and duct sizing, lighting and electrical design.  Until now, Hevacomp has produced software based on straightforward steady or quasi-steady state methods; this has proved popular with engineers, who appreciate easy to use software.

Over the past few years, engineers have been required to carry out more complex analysis, such as over-heating frequency, mixed mode ventilation, CFD analysis etc.  To meet this demand, Hevacomp has developed a Design Simulation package, using EnergyPlus as the calculation engine.  An important feature of the Design Simulation package is that simulation can be carried out using the same project data that engineers have already set up to use with simple load calculations.  This enables simulation studies to be carried out without entering any more project data.  We see this as an important feature, to lead engineers easily into simulation.

With Hevacomp software, a building is set up by tracing around the internal perimeter of each room, adjacent surfaces are automatically detected as partitions.  Databases of constructional elements are used.  An extensive roof and floor modelling program is available, which enables simple or complex roofs to be traced from DXF files.  Walls and partitions are automatically trimmed vertically to fit the roof, rooms above and below target rooms are detected.  This enables a full 3D model to be produced for little more effort than a simple 2D tracing.

Once the building has been set up, building simulation, linking to EnergyPlus, can be carried out to examine room heat losses and gains, summer overheating, peak design months, overheating frequency and building energy.  The package will also produce 3D external shading graphics and internal solar penetration graphics, showing moving sunshine patches within rooms.

Summer overheating frequency can be simulated using CIBSE summer design weather data (available from CIBSE) and hours of overheating can be obtained from cumulative frequency results to check against UK PartL code requirements.  Natural infiltration can be examined by defining flowpaths and opening windows, this enables quite complex natural and mixed mode ventilation systems to be examined, including controlled opening of windows.

A large amount of weather data for annual energy simulation is provided. Hevacomp provide an extensive Meteonorm weather database of over 7000 locations world-wide.  A detailed profiling and scheduling module is available so that you can set up any required plant, gains, occupancy and temperature schedules.  Typical schedules for a large range of building are provided, compatible with UK PartL requirements.

As well as building simulation, a plant simulation module enables engineers to simply define HVAC systems such as radiators, warm air, constant volume a/c, VAV, fan coils, room a/c units, etc.  Central plant items such as boilers, chillers and cooling towers can also be defined.  Databases of common plant and equipment are provided.  From a brief HVAC set of data, the package will automatically set up all the required HVAC components, water and air networks and central plant.  Although simple to set up, complex systems can be defined, which are not limited to Compact HVAC components.

With plant simulation, plant sizing can be carried out, using summer and winter design days, plant and equipment sizing schedules are produced.  Annual energy consumption can be computed, together with fuel cost and CO2 consumption.

Hevacomp has an alliance with CHAM (UK) so that results from Design Simulation can automatically be used to carry out CFD analysis, enabling room air movement and temperature studies to be carried out.  Hevacomp provides an extensive object library so that you can place items such as furniture and people in rooms to see the effect on air movement.