Integrating Building Information Modeling with Object-Oriented Physical Modeling for Building Thermal Simulation

Abstract

This study presents a Building Information Modeling (BIM) to Building Energy Modeling (BEM) translation framework (BIM2BEM) through the integration of BIM with Object-Oriented Physical Modeling (OOPM) for building thermal simulation to support sustainable building design. A Model View Definition (MVD) is used as a data modeling methodology to assist BIM2BEM, and an application of BIM2BEM is demonstrated by visualizing energy performance in BIM.

The framework of BIM2BEM is made of a system interface between BIM and OOPM-based BEM (ModelicaBEM). The interface consists of the following two major phases: (1) pre-processing BIM models to add required thermal parameters into BIM and generate the building topology, and (2) translating BIM to ModelicaBEM automatically and running the thermal simulation. Finally, a case study was conducted to demonstrate and validate the simulation results.

The MVD enables efficient model translation consisting of a process model and a class diagram. The process model demonstrates the object-mapping process from BIM to ModelicaBEM and facilitates the definition of required information during the model translation process. The class diagram represents the object information and object relationships for producing the software tool for automatic model translation. In order to demonstrate and validate the approach, simulation result comparisons have been conducted for three test cases, each having two models: (1) the BIM-based Modelica model (ModelicaBEM) generated using the framework, and (2) the model manually created using Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Modelica Buildings library. The results show that the framework: (1) enables BIM models to be translated into ModelicaBEM models, (2) enables system interface development based on the MVD for thermal simulation, and (3) facilitates the reuse of the original BIM data for building energy simulation without an import/export process.

The visualization application enables visualizing building energy simulation results in BIM for designers to better understand the relationship between design decisions and the building performances. This new application lets architects use BIM as a common user interface for building design and performance visualization.