Towards Zero Energy Buildings

Chapter 2

Abstract

Building Envelope with Phase

Based on recent investigations on building envelope with phase change materials from all over the world, we select the key scientific and technical issues including the thermal design methods, climatic and seasonal suitability and application, etc. The chapter mainly contains four parts: how to design building envelope with phase change materials, how to deal with issues on climatic and seasonal suitability of the technology, how to improve thermal performance of phase change materials applied in building envelope, and what is the application mode. The thermal design principle and a simple calculation method of building envelope with phase change materials are proposed by experiments. Thermal comfort pertaining to ASHRAE Standard 55 under different conditions is investigated, and an approach to estimate favorable climatic characteristics for building envelope with phase change materials is established. To exert the phase change materials applied in building envelope effectively, thermal transfer enhancement methods and application are also provided in the chapter. The chapter can be helpful for the development of building

Change Materials

and Mengyuan Wang

Liu Yang, Yan Liu, Yuhao Qiao, Jiang Liu

energy efficiency and the goal of zero and net zero energy.

climatic and seasonal suitability, application

1. Introduction

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Keywords: building envelope, phase change materials, thermal design,

Building energy saving is essential to overall energy conservation from different sectors [1]. To build a comfortable indoor thermal environment, the energy consumption of air conditioning is increasing rapidly, which has negative impacts on sustainable development. Passive low-energy buildings are developed to solve the problem [2]. Improving thermal performance of building envelope is an effective approach to achieve a stable indoor thermal environment and reduce building energy consumption [3]. There are two main ways for the improvement of building envelope thermal performance. One is to reduce heat transfer coefficient (U-value) then decrease the heat flux of building envelope. Another is to increase thermal inertia of buildings to enhance the resistance to the changing of outdoor thermal environment [4, 5], especially in climate conditions with large daily temperature range, where remarkable energy efficiency performance could be achieved by improving building thermal stability [6, 7]. Adopting heavy structure (such as earth brick) is a traditional method for the improvement of building thermal stability [8]. However, the traditional approach is not suitable for achievement of satisfying
