Home

• We start to move jEPlus to its new home: http://www.iesd.dmu.ac.uk/~jeplus
• I am making available on YouTube some recordings from last year's visit to URV, Tarragona. I hope you will find them useful, if you can get through the tattered speech in the first place. You will also find the jEPlus tutorials we have made so far.
• We have redoubled effort on developing jEPlus, which is now maturing and becoming a very useful tool in its own right. We are also working on a dedicated website for the project.
• Presentation at CIBSE Intelligent Buildings Group seminar Evolution and the Optimum Design of Buildings (20/10/2009, London Programme) is available here (PDF, 6,108KB)

Dr. Yi Zhang, Senior Research Fellow

Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development
De Montfort University
The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)116 2078712
Email: yizhang@dmu.ac.uk

When joined the Institute in January 2004, I was working on “Optimal Supervisory Control of Renewable Energy Systems in Buildings” (EPSRC 2004-2006). The project investigated model-based control strategies for tackling complex dynamics between renewable thermal systems and buildings. Though aimed initially to implement an optimization algorithm in the control box of the Brocks Hill Visitor Centre, we ended up designing a whole new controller with the optimisation method, while picking faults in the building and system design along the way. It wasn't as great as it sounds, as after all these years we are still waiting to prove our wonderful new idea in the actual building.

Optimisation is my number one favourite subject. Between 2000-2003, I did PhD in the Department of Civil and Building Engineering of Loughborough University, where I worked on the ASHRAE project “Building System Design Synthesis and Optimization” (ASHRAE RP-1049). “The innovative aspect of this work was the use of topological optimization to automatically generate conceptual designs for air-conditioning systems.” My real findings, however, is that it is so damn difficult to optimise anything, let along “everything at once” as in the case of a building. Alas, I got my PhD in the end, and this work was recognized as “Human-Competitive”. Sorry, I mean the ALGORITHM we developed was “human-competitive”!

My education was mainly received in China. I graduated from Tsinghua University in 1995 with BEng degrees in HVAC&R Engineering and Environmental Engineering. This was followed by postgraduate study at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC, previously known as the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine). My work there included developing a personal indoor thermal environment monitor. It was great fun making things from scratch, including making thermal anemometer sensors with nickel capillary tubes and fine copper wires. I got my MSc in 1998. Between 1999 and 2000, I spent 12 months as a visiting researcher in the renowned International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy of the Technical University of Denmark. My desk was right opposite the late Professor Ole Fanger's. Well, across the depth of the building and through several doors that was… but I COULD see him if he was in and the doors were open. I am still fascinated by that place. The Centre has only a handful of permanent staff and a small group of research students. However, it has been attracting researchers from all over the world like magnets; and so many people in this field have passed through the place. Ever so often during a conversation with someone I just met at a conference, “yes, I was there for xx months” would come up.

For a brief period between 1998 and 1999, I worked as a software engineer for an IT company developing operating systems for cash machines (ATM). I would not call it a dull job because I travelled a lot. While I am not on the move, however, much of the time was spent on installing and reinstalling software from a pile of floppy disks. It can be amusing sometimes, when a machine developed a habit of eating cards or printing nonsense on the receipt. It had NEVER happened that a machine suddenly dispenses a lot of notes for no good reason, though. What a shame!

My research interests include computer modelling and optimization, particularly in the areas of building and HVAC system design, and human thermal comfort. I was hired to further develop of the IESD-Fiala model, which was originally developed by Dr Dusan Fiala in the Institute in the 1990s. Over the years the model has been enhanced and validated extensively. It is now one of the most advanced human thermal regulatory models in existence. The planned development focuses on two directions: individualization and integration… This is still an on-going project, although it is seemingly going nowhere from software development's point of view, as I simply don't see any any building-related applications for a sophisticated and detailed human model as such.

Presently, majority of my time is spent on building optimisation and tools, especially on jEPlus. jEPlus was originally developed as a utility for managing parametric studies; but it is now matured and showing much greater potentials than running parametrics. I would like to imagine this to be the tool that completely changes the way we do research with building simulation. jEPlus bridges parametrics, optimisation, and uncertainty/sensitivity analysis methods, with COMPUTING POWER! This bit needs further explanation, which I will do in the software section.

• Advanced Design + Optimization (ADOPT), 2010-2013 - Technology Strategy Board
• CityNet, 2007-2010 - EU FP6 Marie-Curie Research Training Network
• Implementation of Genetic Algorithm for DesignBuilder Software, 2008-2009 - DesignBuilder Software Ltd.
• Optimal Supervisory Control, 2004-2006 - EPSRC
• Building System Synthesis and Optimization, 2000-2004 - ASHRAE

• Ageing and Thermal Comfort Modelling - De Montfort University
• Web-based Questionnaire - ICIEE, Technical University of Denmark

• IESD-Fiala model - Multi-nodal human thermal regulatory model originally developed by Dr Dusan Fiala at the Institute in 1995-2006
• Matlab/Simulink models for the BrocksHill Visitor Centre - Model of the building and the energy system developed as part of the EPSRC project
• Psychrometric models of secondary HVAC components - developed as part of the ASHRAE RP1049 project

• jEPlus - the Java EnergyPlus shell that supports parametric study and multi-processor platforms
• jCFX5 - the Java shell for Ansys CFX (version 5 and above). It can be used for parametric studies using CFD models
• jFiala - a Java implementation (therefore supports multiple platforms) of the IESD-Fiala model
• EA_Java - an JDEAL-based Evolutionary Algorithm package. Significant extensions include graph encoding and many new operators
• WebQuest - a tool kit for designing questionnaires for thermal comfort or IEQ surveys. It is completely written in Java, and suitable for local network deployment
• More Java tools - miscellaneous Java tools including a weather forecast retriever

• Psychrometric Calculator - A pocket psychrometric calculator (runs on Java-enabled mobile phones) for HVAC engineers
• PMV/PPD Calculator - this mobile phone utility calculates ISO7730 PMV/PPD indices for given environmental conditions

• Zhang, Y. (2012) “Use jEPlus as an efficient building design optimisation tool”, accepted for presenting at CIBSE ASHRAE Technical Symposium 2012
• Tresidder, E.G., Zhang, Y., Forrester, A.,(2011) “Optimisation of low-energy building design using surrogate models”, BS2011 - 12th Conference of International Building Performance Simulation Association, Sydney, 14-16 November link ( B, 0 downloads)
• Korolija, I., Marjanovic-Halburd, L., Zhang, Y., Hanby, V. I. (2011) “Influence of building parameters and HVAC systems coupling on building energy performance.” Energy and Buildings 43(6): 1247-1253 link
• Zhang, Y., Korolija, I (2010) “Performing complex parametric simulations with jEPlus”, SET2010 - 9th International Conference on Sustainable Energy Technologies, 24-27 August 2010, Shanghai, China pdf (444.89 KiB, 0 downloads)
• Novieto, D. T., Zhang, Y. (2010) “Thermal Comfort Implications of the Ageing Effect on Metabolism, Cardiac Output and Body Weight”, Windsor Conference 2010, 9-11 April 2010, Windsor, UK pdf (165.71 KiB, 0 downloads)
• Zhang, Y. (2009) “‘Parallel’ EnergyPlus and the development of a parametric analysis tool”, IBPSA BS2009, 27–30 July 2009, Glasgow, UK pdf
• Zhang, Y., Novieto, D.T., Ji, Y. (2009) “Human Environmental Heat Transfer Simulation With CFD – The Advances And Challenges”, IBPSA BS2009, 27–30 July 2009, Glasgow, UK pdf
• Wright, J. A., Zhang, Y. (2008) “The Minimum Capacity of HVAC Secondary Systems (with Capacity Reduction by Inter-zonal Air-flow)”, HVAC&R Research, Vol. 14(3):397-416 link
• Wright, J. A., Zhang, Y. (2008) “Evolutionary Synthesis of HVAC System Configurations: Experimental Results”, HVAC&R Research, Vol. 14(1):57-72, link
• Wright, J. A., Zhang, Y., Angelov, P.P., Buswell, R. A., Hanby, V. I. (2008) “Evolutionary Synthesis of HVAC System Configurations: Algorithm Development (RP1049)”, HVAC&R Research, Vol. 14(1):33-55, link
• Zhang, Y., Hanby, V. I. (2007) “Short-Term Prediction of Weather Parameters Using Online Weather Forecasts”, IBPSA BS’2007, 3 – 6 September 2007, Beijing, China, pp. 1411-1416, pdf
• Zhang, Y., Wright, J. A., Hanby, V. I. (2006) “Energy aspects of HVAC system configurations – problem definition and test cases”, HVAC&R Research Special Issue, Vol. 12(3c):871-888, ISSN: 1078-9669, link
• Zhang, Y., Hanby, V. I. (2006) “Model-Based Control of Renewable Energy Systems in Buildings”, HVAC&R Research Special Issue, Vol. 12(3a):577-598, ISSN: 1078-9669 link
• Zhang, Y. (2005) “Synthesis of Optimum HVAC System Configurations by Evolutionary Algorithm”, PhD thesis, Loughborough University, UK, pdf (3.36 MiB, 0 downloads)

... More publications

The Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development

De Montfort University

Department of Civil and Building Engineering, Loughborough University

International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy, Technical University of Denmark

Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention

Tsinghua University