Development of an Expert System for the Calculation of Building's Design Cooling Load

As a widely existing problem in current design of airconditioning systems, excessive design cooling load has caused considerable surplus in water chiller capacity and serious waste of energy. Surveys show that, in some projects, even in the hottest seasons, one third or even one half of the water chillers are not in operation. In order to solve this problem, expert system technology is introduced and incorporated with load-index(design cooling load per unit area) assessment method. Consequently, an expert system for the calculation of building's design cooling load is established on the basis of artificial neural network theories. Application examples indicate that this system is simple and workable; the calculation results thereof achieve high accuracy, and calculation methods are in conformity to the thinking habits of designers.