Design and instrumentation of an intelligent building testbed

This paper presents the design and instrumentation of a 3:5-scale physical testbed of an intelligent building. The testbed is designed to enable performance evaluation of various temperature control algorithms in a controlled and repeatable setting. Key features of this testbed include fully control...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Minakais, Matt, Mishra, Sandipan, Wen, John T., Lagace, Luc, Castiglia, Timothy
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Buildings
Heating
Instruments
Temperature measurement
Temperature sensors
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Summary:This paper presents the design and instrumentation of a 3:5-scale physical testbed of an intelligent building. The testbed is designed to enable performance evaluation of various temperature control algorithms in a controlled and repeatable setting. Key features of this testbed include fully controlled mass flow and supply air temperature, a sensor-rich environment (producing both temperature and energy measurements), control of the ambient temperature around the testbed, and a modular structure with multiple zones and varying degrees of thermal and mass flow coupling. The testbed is partitioned into 6 rooms; the interconnected structure of these rooms allows us to study the thermal coupling that occurs between adjacent zones and to explore the challenges associated with under-actuated zones. Air conditioning is provided by wall mounted thermoelectric coolers controlled wirelessly from a central computer. A unique feature of this testbed is its placement inside a larger temperature-controlled enclosure, which allows simulation of time-varying ambient weather. Precise control of ambient temperature provides a means for robust comparison and evaluation of control architectures. As a preliminary demonstration, we present experimental results comparing the performance of a decentralized proportional-integral controller and a decentralized adaptive controller under time-varying ambient temperature.
ISSN:2161-8070
2161-8089
DOI:10.1109/CoASE.2015.7294032