Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems are used to maintain desired indoor comfort levels in the built environment against the effects of disturbances such as weather conditions and internal loads. Since these disturbances are in general predictable and buildings have thermal mass, implementing model predictive control strategies can lead to energyand cost-efficiency. The auto...

Public Abstract Problem: Heating, ventilation, and airconditioning (HVAC) systems are prevalent especially in the US. Data shows that maintaining the air comfort of buildings consumes approximately 30% of the nation's energy. Human users and control systems are responsible for wasting as much as 30% of this energy. This research addresses both the human motivation and system aspects of HVAC app...

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is a major energy consumer in buildings, and. implementing demand driven HVAC operations is a way to reduce HVAC related energy consumption. This relies on the availability of occupancy information, which determines peak/off-hour modes that impact cooling/heating loads of HVAC systems. This research proposes an occupancy estimation model that is...

In this paper, the thermal performance of four common insulators in two internal and external insulation systems is investigated for the ASHRAE setpoint range by applying detailed numerical simulation and Anti-Insulation phenomenon. Anti-Insulation phenomenon and consequent extra load on the HVAC system can occur following the thermal insulation of a building if proper temperature setpoint is n...

We study providing ancillary service to the power grid by using the flexibility of HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning) systems in commercial buildings. The building HVAC system’s thermal and power consumption models are constructed and key model parameters are estimated from measure data from Pugh Hall of University of Florida. We develop a method for optimal output tracking of a time...

Abstract A Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system is a nonlinear multi-input multi-output (MIMO) system. This system is very difficult to control the temperature and the humidity ratio of a thermal space because of complex nonlinear characteristics. This paper proposes an adaptive fuzzy output feedback control based on observer for the nonlinear HVAC system. The nonlinear HVAC ...

In this paper, we examine closed-loop operation of an HVAC central plant to demonstrate that closed-loop movinghorizon scheduling provides robustness to inaccurate forecasts, and that economic performance is not seriously impaired by shortened prediction horizons or inaccurate forecasts when feedback is employed. Using a general mixedinteger linear programming formulation for the scheduling pro...

HVAC systems constitute ∼ 40% of energy in commercial buildings, and faults in HVAC account for 5% to 20% of its energy consumption. Typically, HVAC in modern buildings are managed using Building Managing Systems (BMS), and fault detection is one of the essential services provided by BMS to keep HVAC operational. The current techniques used for fault detection fail to detect large number of eff...

In this paper, we propose a predictive maintenance scheme for centralized HVAC systems by autonomous monitoring and analyzing their acoustic emissions. Our proposed solution allows a building to be retrofitted to monitor its HVAC without having to modify the existing infrastructure. Our approach is to employ an energy-efficient, low-cost, and distributed acoustic sensing platform to capture and...