Future of Buildings: Graduate Insights and Innovations

“Designing Smarter Simulations: Exploring Fractional Factorial Approaches in Building Energy Modeling ”
Presenter: Yangxi Bai, second-year PhD candidate, Department of Sustainable Resources Management at SUNY ESF

Parametric modeling in building energy simulations often involves managing multiple interacting variables, where full factorial designs quickly become computationally expensive. This study examines the use of fractional factorial design (FFD) as an efficient alternative for simulations with moderate factor complexity. We evaluate how different FFD resolutions affect model outcomes, focusing on factor ranking stability and regression diagnostics, compared to full factorial designs. Preliminary findings suggest that lower-resolution FFDs can preserve the relative ranking of key input factors and yield comparable regression fit diagnostics, despite requiring significantly fewer runs. These results highlight FFD’s potential as a practical tool for streamlining performance-based building modeling. Future work will extend these comparisons to different building types and simulation objectives to assess generalizability.

About the speaker: Yangxi Bai is a second-year PhD candidate in the Department of Sustainable Resources Management at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF), where she is advised by Dr. Endong Wang. Her research aims to support sensitivity and uncertainty analysis in early-stage building energy simulations by developing statistical design of experiments and Bayesian calibration methods.  She is also a recipient of the SUNY ESF Alumni Association Grant and a GSA Research Grant. Today, she will present her talk, “Designing Smarter Simulations: Exploring Fractional Factorial Approaches in Building Energy Modeling,” which explores how to identify key input factors with minimal simulation burden in moderate-complexity models.

Hosted by the ASHRAE Student Branch at Syracuse University, “Future of Buildings: Graduate Insights and Innovations” presentations are held every other Thursday at 727 E. Washington St. Lunch is provided and free parking is available onsite. Please RSVP to attend.

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