Building performance simulation of Advanced Building Envelope (ABE): towards a pythonbased open-source library to support co-simulation for design and operations

 Advancements in materials and technologies have led to the development of Multi-functional Advanced Building Façades (MABFs) with multi-objective of enhancing building performance and decreasing environmental impact. However, assessing their performance using state-of-the-art Building Performance Simulation (BPS) tools poses significant challenges due to the absence of specific models for novel building envelope technologies, difficulties in integrating advanced controls, and simulating performance across multiple physical domains.EnergyPlus has introduced the Energy Management System (EMS) and integrated Python capabilities, enabling the co-simulation of Python-based models and control strategies developed by users. The purpose of the paper is to showcase a scalable co-simulation approach, aimed at defining an open-source python-based library of MABFs, that can be interfaced with BPS tools, so to support the evluation and optimization design of MABFs. The approach is herewith presented by co-simulating with Energyplus, evaluating the performance of two highly complex MABFs (1) Microfluidic triple glazing and (2) flexible Double Skin Facade.