Brasília climate files available on the Climate One Building for hygrothermal simulations

Abstract

Hygrothermal studies involve the transport of heat and moisture in liquid and vapor forms. In computational hygrothermal simulations, the climate file provides input data for evaluating the performance of the building system. These input data must be representative of the location and the exposure conditions since they influence the building's airtightness, the temperatures, and the moisture contents, which in turn affect the potential for degradation of constructive elements. In this context, it is necessary to verify the quality of different input data sources to obtain reliable results in hygrothermal simulations. Therefore, the objective of this article is to analyze the seven climate files available for Brasília in the repository of the Climate One Building website, comparing the values of the annual sum of driving rain (mm/a) in various facade orientations, obtained by reading the external climatic data in the hygrothermal simulation with WUFI Pro® 6.5. After carrying out comparative analyzes of the TMY and TRY climate files, it was found that the TRY file does not include information on driving rain and that there are significant differences among the available TMY files. Based on these findings, the most representative climate file for hygrothermal simulations in Brasilia is indicated.