Hi, I wanted to open this discussion up again because I’ve been working some more on modelling the canopy and made some definite improvements but also cant explain the reason for some of these improvements.
I went with the approach of modelling the canopy as the roof of a larger room (this: “1. Model the shade as the ‘roof’, the ground as the ‘floor’ and customise the walls so that they are as
non-existent as possible”).
Thanks mostly to the new V1.4 “Vegetation Material” component and the Opaque Material No mass component for the canopy, the simulated temperatures are reasonably close to the measured ones (see graph below) BUT only when I use the Polygon Clipping method for shadow calculation.
If i use pixel counting the ground temperatures follow a similar curve to what you see in the previous graphs. I guess this is because the pixle counting method is somehow not counting the windows as transparent (although the air temperature inside the canpoy room matches outside so some part of the EnergyPlus calculations are reading them as open). Can anyone explain why? Im submitting a conference paper on this pretty soon so if anyone can help me understand this it would be much appreciated!
