BLACK BOX MODELLING THE THERMAL BEHAVIOUR OF IHOUSE USING AUTO REGRESSIVE AND MOVING AVERAGE (ARMA) MODEL

Abstract

Modelling and simulation of the dynamic thermal behaviour of a building is important to test any proposed thermal comfort control system and strategy in the building. A simulation model can be obtained by using either the white box, grey box or black box modelling method. This research focuses on the usage of auto regressive and moving average (ARMA) model, a type of black box model that represents the dynamic thermal behaviour of iHouse testbed and uses real recorded data from the testbed and limited knowledge regarding the physical characteristics of the testbed. The performance of the ARMA model developed in this research is compared with the performance of House Thermal Simulator, a previously developed model, based on grey box modelling. Results obtained shows that ARMA model works better than House Thermal Simulator in some aspects.