Sensitivity analysis of design parameters of envelope enclosure performance in the dry-hot and dry-cold areas

In a bid to quantify the sensitivity of envelope enclosure’s design parameters in the dry-hot and dry-cold areas and to provide a reference for the local building performance design, this paper uses ANN modelling which combined with the improved Garson algorithm to calculate the connection weight sensitivity (CWS), the first-order sensitivity (RBD-S1 and DMIM-S1) and the global sensitivity (DMIM-delta) of the design parameters. These parameters were calculated by using different methods in SALib. Through the verification and analysis of the sensitive result, the applicability of the CWS and DMIM-delta was confirmed. Among the design parameters involved in this study, the sum of the sensitive values of S-D, S-N and S-A exceeds 60% in each performance label, and the sum of the sensitive values of WWR_S and WWR_N exceeds 20%. The performance design of envelope enclosure in this area requires applying reasonable shading components and appropriate optimisation of the North and South of WWR. After the sensitivity analysis process, the calculation efficiency of the model can be improved as far as possible without reducing the accuracy of the model in the later simplified calculation and multi-objective optimisation. The building performance simulation model has a high degree of non-linearity, and the interpretability of the model can be enhanced through the sensitivity analysis process. Although the internal calculation process is unknowable, the perception of the results caused by the input parameters is significantly enhanced.