Invitation: MS Thesis Defense of Jacob Thomas
Hello ME Community,
You are invited to join the Masters Thesis Defense of Jacob Thomas, on Thursday, April 16, beginning at 1:00 PM. The defense will be presented in person in the Engineering Building room 210-I. (the Mechanical Engineering Conference room)
Advisor: Dr. Alok Ghanekar
Title: A ViableAlternative to Manual J: Residential Load Calculation for Sizing an HVAC Systemin Residential Buildings
Abstract: The accurate estimation of the heating and cooling loads of residential buildings is of great interest to HVAC contractors and engineers. ACCA's Manual J is the current method for sizing and estimating HVAC systems for detached residential homes. Due to the time-consuming nature of the Manual J procedure, many contractors avoid using the standard, which leads to oversized or undersized HVAC systems. This work proposes a method to accurately size the HVAC system using minimal contractor involvement. This approach involves collecting in-situ temperature data to estimate thermal characteristics of a residence using the heat balance method and resistancecapacitance model. For this study, temperature data is collected from a miniature house placed on the roof of UMBC's engineering building. Temperature data is used to tune the system and validate the viability of the model. This study demonstrates the accuracy of the model to size the heating and cooling loads to within 5% of the load recommended by ACCA's Manual J.