How does EnergyPlus differentiate between inside and outside walls?

Hey everyone, I'm pretty new to E+ so this might be a pretty basic question:

Can anyone explain to me, how EnergyPlus differentiates between inside and outside walls? For example if I want to simulate an office room that is part of a larger building, that has three inside walls and one wall facing outside (with an window).

As the temperature "on the other side of the wall" affects the wall temperature a lot and therefore also the temperature in the room I'm simulating I'm sure there is a way to include this.

Thanks a lot in advance!

Tillski

asked 2022-11-02 04:23:10 -0500

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Aaron Boranian

updated 2022-11-02 20:39:20 -0500

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As Denis said, generally.

For your specific application, which is modeling one room as part of a larger building, the easiest is to put one wall as Outdoors and the 3 "inside" walls as Adiabatic. This will negate the heat transfer from these wall. This assumption is fine only if you think you have similar temperatures on both sides of the inside walls (eg: it's another office/room with the same thermostat setpoint on the other side).

If you have different conditions, you can use a SurfaceProperty:OtherSideCoefficients for example to set a specific temperature / temperature equation on the other side, but this is slightly more complicated.