The simulation program THERAKLES calculates the dynamic thermal or hygrothermal behavior of rooms and buildings. The calculation tool is meant to be used by planning engineers and architects in the fields of building physics and building climatology, as well as HVAC engineering.

The simulation program predicts the thermal comfort and energy efficiency depending on architectural design decisions, room utilization and control parameters of the HVAC system. THERAKLES supports the optimization of all-season thermal comfort and the reduction of energy demand for heating and air conditioning.

The optimized calculation engine provides very fast simulation results despite of the detailed physical model. Normally, an annual simulation only lasts a few seconds

Application

Design/engineering practice

THERAKLES is being used for:

• Simulation-based evaluation of summer thermal comfort (according to DIN standard 4108-2)
• Calculation of heating/cooling loads and simulation of annual energy demand
• Dimensioning/siszing of heating and cooling systems
• Control optimization during intermittent heating
• Hygrothermal analysis of indoor climate and evaluation of the hygric buffering capabilities according to selected construction materials or construction variants
• Generation of dynamic indoor room air conditions for hygrothermal analysis of building components/li>
• Quick analysis of design variants
• ... and many other application areas.

Teaching and further education

THERAKLES is very well applicable for teaching because of its fast calculation engine and convenient integrated result analysis. All model parameters can be varied in a flexible way and their impact is available after a few seconds of simulation time. THERAKLES can be used to computate and visualize dynamic processes in rooms and buildings, however, it can also be used for steady-state assessments.

THERAKLES is available free of charge. It uses open input and output file formats. Results are stored in plain text files and can be imported into programs like spreadsheets (Excel etc.) and are therefore evaluable in manifold ways. Models can be parametrized very flexibly, so that THERAKLES can be used for in-depths analysis in research and study projects.

Special features of THERAKLES

THERAKLES has a number of advantageous features:

• Exact physical modeling of thermal and hygrothermal storage and transport processes through use of spatial discretization of constructions (dynamic temperature and moisture profiles are computed within constructions)
• Integrated model for solar altitude and radiation loads
• Flexible definition of time schedules for utilization characteristics
• Simple and clearly arranged user interface for parameter specifications
• Immediate visual analysis of results after the simulation
• Error-checked simulation process with a fully mass and energy conservative method and adaptive time step adjustment scheme
• Highly optimized solver engine based on preconditioned Krylow-subspace approach
• Physical models and solver engine validated with reference cases from building standard and tests with higher requirements for dynamic processes
• External command line solver for script-based management of simulations and integration into other software applications
• Support of Functional Mockup Interface Standards version 2 for model exchange and co-simulation
• runs natively on Windows, MacOSX and Linux