Diagnostic test cases for verifying surface heat transfer algorithms and boundary conditions in building energy simulation programs

Verification and validation are crucial in developing and implementing models. Although there are standards to test energy simulation software, this article describes an additional set of eight test cases that are a combination of analytical cases and numerical cases for solid conduction heat transfer. These tests focus on diagnosing and verifying conductive heat transfer algorithms and boundary conditions in building envelopes or fabrics. As an example, EnergyPlus versions 5, 6 and 7 are tested using these eight test cases. The test cases were useful for detecting several bugs in the code. The authors recommend these test cases as useful complements to existing verification test cases for building envelopes.