ALMAbuild & ALMABEST

ALMABEST (Building Energy Simulation Toolbox) is a Matlab toolbox, developed by the University of Bologna and operating in the Simulink environment, for the dynamic energy simulation of the whole building coupled to a HVAC systems. ALMABEST is composed by two libraries: ALMABuild, used for the building modelling, and ALMAHVAC, adopted for the simulation of HVAC components. The two libraries are both composed by a series of Simulink blocksets and by a set of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). In particular each library consists of specific blockset devoted to specific aspects (i.e. weather data collection, thermal balance of the envelope elements and so on), which are composed by a series of subsystem. Finally, each subsystem contains a set of elementary blocks that are related to specific aspects of the building modelling.

The main feature of ALMABuild consists in the development of a series of m-files that, thanks to a series of GUIs, allow to automatically implement the building model in the Simulink desktop. These m-files enable to recall automatically blocks from both Simulink and ALMABuild libraries. The blocks are properly linked each other by the m-files and specific parameters are set in an automatic way. Consequently, the creation of the whole building modelling driven by these GUIs becomes fast and safe, with a reduced probability to make mistakes for non-expert users.