Modelisation des installations de genie climatique en environnement de simulation graphique methodologie de description et realisation d'une bibliotheque de modeles de composants

Nowadays simulation tools are extensively used in studies related to building physics by scientists. The need of an optimal energy design of buildings, which results from the depletion of energy resources and environment conservation issues, have made their use more and more important. These tools, though popular within the research community, have not yet found their way to practitioners. One of the major concerns now is the transfer of these tools as well as the required expertise and training to practitioners. Various actions, through associations of engineers or manufacturers, European projects or the International Energy Agency, are currently carried out to facilitate this transfer of simulation tools. The work presented in this dissertation lies within this framework. It is primarily intended for studies of control systems involved in HVAC plants. The first target users are manufacturers of control equipment for the design of new products and also for the definition of innovative control strategies. The traditional modelling methodologies focus in most cases, on the description of a problem, its mathematical representation and its numerical resolution. The method described here integrates the concept of comprehension of the model by a user in the modelling process. The modeller must be conscious of the information that needs to be provided to the potential users of his model of system or component and evaluate their level of competency. The General System theory is used for the description of the thermal behaviour of the building and technical plants. A "generic" Building System adapted to control studies results from this description. The interactions between the elements of the Building System are defined by using technological terms to be closer to the world of practitioners. Thus cooling/heating fluids (air or water), communication networks or weather data are used to characterise the interactions instead of using only heat and mass transfer or information flow. This "Building System" has the advantage of being adapted for implementation in a graphical simulation environment. It can be readily used. Extensive use of graphical programming techniques is made to emphasise the semantic nature inherent in these environments for the assembly of virtual systems identical to the real installations. This descriptive method is applied in a widespread graphical simulation environment that adopts the modular concept. The graphical environment is also used to improve the comprehension of the models of elements in the Building System. This work proposes a structuring method of models to highlight the functional schema. The concept of modularity, usually used for the description of system, is introduced at the level of each element. The problems of parameterisation of models are also tackled in this work. Practitioners often bring forward the complexity to parameterise a model as a major hindrance to the use of simulation tools. The models must have a version with parameters that are "easily available". The model must be "easy to use" even if it is not most complete one. In some cases, data of typological or "expertise" sources are provided. The graphical environment makes it possible to provide various levels of abstractions for the user interface. It is thus possible to define a hierarchy among the parameters according to their complexity. The open architecture of the graphical programming environment enables the user to go through the models according to its needs and its competence. This can be done both on the system level and on the component level. To derive a maximum of benefit from this characteristic, the modeller must include the structuring process in the development phase of the model in the graphical environment. At the same time it is necessary to be conscious that an excessive use of the graphic programming can complicate comprehension. The modeller must constantly determine the utility of graphical programming and the shift to textual programming where required. This dissertation ends with the presentation of a library of models of HVAC component developed in this work as a toolbox of an existing simulation environment (MATLAB/ SIMULINK). The use of simulation for thermal issues in buildings by control specialists is enhanced by the fact that the chosen environment is well known in the Control Engineering field.