I was just wondering if it would be possible to devide the current EP Opaque material component into 2: material without thickness; and layer where 2 inputs would be needed: EP Opaque material and thickness. A lot of times the same material is used in different constructions with different thicknesses and I really don’t find it practical to create the whole Material with all the constant properties for each instance. I had altered the EP Opaque material component before for my use and created the layer component, but when there is a new ladybug tools release and Ï update the components in the definition, I have to do it all over again.
Hi @mostapha. I believe, the only thing I did, was add a line:
if thickness == None: thickness = 1
Then the next “component” just takes the output of the altered EP Opaque material, creates a line that contains the specified thickness and with this line it replaces the constant line “1, !Thickness {m}” and changes the name of the material so that it contains the thickness to ensure that there are not two materials with different thickness but the same name. The result is actually again an opaque material for EP.
Maybe you will see it in the attached definition. I am sure it is not the most elegant workaround, but to be honest I was in a hurry back then so I just did, what came to my mind first.
Hi @zdenom, I actually quite have the same need as I would find it convenient to be able to create a new EP Material just by modifying the thickness of an existing one.
With containment comes more “free time”… so I created a component that takes any EP Opaque material as an input and creates a new one with the desired thickness.
Please feel free to give it a try and tell me if it works for you.
I quickly tried it and it seems to work just fine.
Why EnergyPlus doesn’t resort on a layer abstraction to differenciate between the material properties, and a layer of this material with a given thikness in a given construction (= assembly of layers) ?
This is how I came out to this topic! It might sounds like a dumb question … but I can’t stop questioning me about this point as it is enforcing an un intuitive (and more complex) workflow in materials data management.
Is there a known argument to this modelling design choice ?
having to define a material flavour for each thickness feels “overkilling”
However I must admit in some (rare ?) cases material properties are dependent of the thickness :
for instance the conductivity of a static air (or gas) gap highly depends of the thickness of this gap (because for thin layers convective transferts are limited). So you don’t want to resort on a generic “air material” and blindly apply a thickness to it to build a layer.
An expert thought on this topic would be much appreciate !