ENME424: Urban Microclimate and Energy

This course examines urban microclimate from the perspective of transient heat and mass transfer using building energy simulations for building clusters. The focus is on understanding building energy consumption and environmental impacts from the individual building scale (~100) to a neighborhood scale (~103). Emerging morphological properties of building clusters modulate transient convective and radiative heat transfer resulting in different local microclimatic conditions. At the neighborhood scale, these conditions are analyzed using heat and mass transfer simulations in building clusters to provide boundary conditions for transient building energy simulations. At the individual building scale, besides the energy consumption, this course examines connection between indoor and outdoor environments.

The students will be able to deploy the total surface energy balance equations for urban microenvironments. Furthermore, they will be able to explicitly solve the system of energy balance equations for simplified case studies. Finally, the students will be able to solve a system of energy balance equations for buildings in urban environments using modern numerical simulation techniques and tools. In the process, they will be able to define most important boundary conditions for solving such a system of equations, exemplified by campus building case studies.

• Advanced Building Mechanical Systems
• LEED Rating Systems (LEED-NC and LEED-ND)
• Building Energy Simulations
• Metered Energy Consumption Patterns in Campus Buildings
• Building Performance Metrics, Life Cycle Cost, and GHG Emissions 
• Urban Climatology, Surface Energy Balance, and Urban Heat Island
• Building Energy Balance
• Neighborhood Effects on Building Energy Consumption 
• Sustainable Building Enclosure Solutions
• Actual Performance, UMd Office of Sustainability 
• Model Calibration Approaches