Application of Global Sensitivity Analysis of Model Output to Building Thermal Simulations

In this paper is exposed a set of applications of global sensitivity analysis to building thermal modelling. The aim is to demonstrate the interest of such tools for model analysis and to encourage their use. Indeed, since the last ten years important improvements have been made in the field of sensitivity analysis and especially in ANOVA-based computational methods. Yet, their use in the field of building performance modelling is uncommon. After recalling the concept of ANOVAbased sensitivity analysis and the associated sensitivity indices, we describe some computational methods to compute the global sensitivity indices of model input factors. The emphasis is put on the methodology that is computationally cheapest but provides the more information. For illustration, they are applied to an actual test-cell thermal model.