Daylight Performance of a Translucent Textile Membrane Roof with Thermal Insulation

The article presents author’s propositions for shaping free forms of buildings sensitive to harmonious incorporation into built or natural environments. Complex folded structures of buildings roofed with regular shell structures are regarded as the most useful in creative shaping the free forms that can easily adapt to various expected environmental conditions. Three more and more sophisticated methods are proposed for creating variously conditioned free form structures. The first method allows the possibility of combining many single free forms into one structure and leaves the designer full freedom in shaping regular or irregular structures. The second, more sophisticated method introduces additional rules supporting the designer's spatial reasoning and intuition in imposing regularity of the shapes of the building structure and its roof shell structure. The third, most sophisticated method introduces additional conditions allowing the optimization of the regular shapes and arrangement of complete shell roof segments on the basis of an arbitrary reference surface and a finite number of straight lines normal to the surface. This original, interdisciplinary study offers new insight into, and knowledge of, unconventional methods for the creative shaping of innovative free forms, where great possibility and significant restrictions result from geometrical and mechanical properties of the materials used. Solving a number of issues in the field of civil engineering, descriptive geometry and architecture is crucial in the process of creating these structures.

Section: Critical Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Transformed Shell Roof Structures as the Main Determinant in Creative Shaping Building Free Forms Sensitive to Man-Made and Natural Environments

Abramczyk

2019

“…Furthermore, there is an increased demand for solutions that can also be applied in the form of retrofits to existing building structures as well. This signifies the need for an in-depth study of the interrelation between architectural characteristics and daylight [12][13][14][15]. While the selections of the luminaires [16][17][18] and the corresponding lighting control [19][20][21][22][23][24][25] are crucial for the calculation of energy consumption, the building form and the corresponding impact of the daylight [26,27] determines the energy savings potential, and is still an important issue at the initial design stage of a building.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of Different Roof Types Concerning Daylight in Industrial Buildings during the Initial Design Phase: Methodology and Case Study

Mavridou

Doulos

2019

Used properly, daylight can provide visual comfort, reduce energy consumption and improve health and safety at work. This paper investigates the influence that different roof types, (i.e., sawtooth roof, skylight and monitor), have on daylight levels, along with the construction cost in an industrial environment in Athens, Greece. Construction costs and daylight adequacy/uniformity are antagonistic phenomena, since as the distance between the roof openings increases, the construction cost is minimised, while the daylight levels and the uniformity are reduced. Therefore, an optimisation method is proposed in order to find the optimum distance between the roof openings. The selected building is a representative unit of Greek industrial facilities, while the optimisation method is based upon a multiparametric approach. This consists of three (3) different roof opening arrangement types with different geometric characteristics. The daylight metrics used are the Daylight Area, the Daylight Factor, the Mean Daylight Autonomy, the Uniform Daylight Index and the Annual Sunlight Exposure. Overall, sawtooth roofs represent the best choice for daylight provision in industrial buildings at the examined geographic location. Using the aforementioned optimisation method, the optimum solution of distances between the roof openings ranges from 10 m to 13 m.

“…Taylor et al [16] examined the thermal losses from various roof systems in terms of the economic cost of lost insulation due to thermal bridging. Gürlich et al [17] analyzed the daylight usage in buildings and quantified the daylight and energy performance of a complex multi-layer textile membrane roof. In this work a genetic algorithm (GA) was been chosen as the optimization tool.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic Algorithm Applied to Multi-Criteria Selection of Thermal Insulation on Industrial Shed Roof

Stamoulis¹,

Santos²,

Lenz³

et al. 2019

The rational use of energy has motivated research on improving the energy efficiency of buildings, which are responsible for a large share of world consumption. A strategy to achieve this goal is the application of optimized thermal insulation on a building envelope to avoid thermal exchanges with the external environment, reducing the use of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems. In order to contribute to the best choice of insulation applied to an industrial shed roof, this study aims to provide an optimization tool to assist this process. Beyond the thermal comfort and cost of the insulation, some hygrothermic properties also have been analysed to obtain the best insulation option. To implement this optimization technique, several thermo-energetic simulations of an industrial shed were performed using the Domus software, applying 4 types of insulation material (polyurethane, expanded polystyrene, rockwool and glass wool) on the roof. Ten thicknesses ranging from 0.5 cm to 5 cm were considered, with the purpose of obtaining different thermal comfort indexes (PPD, predicted percentage dissatisfied). Posteriorly, the best insulation ranking has been obtained from the weights assigned to the parameters in the objective function, using the technique of the genetic algorithm (GA) applied to multi-criteria selection. The optimization results showed that polyurethane (PU) insulation, applied with a thickness of 1 cm was the best option for the roof, considering the building functional parameters, occupant metabolic activity, clothing insulation and climate conditions. On the other hand, when the Brazilian standard was utilized, rock wool (2 cm) was considered the best choice.Buildings 2019, 9, 238 2 of 12 play a crucial role in the thermal performance of the buildings. In this context, the choice of the best insulation is difficult due to the various parameters that should be analyzed such as performance, cost, uncertainties related to hygrothermal properties, sustainability issues, etc. In this line of research, Adamczyk and Dylewski [3] proposed a methodology for assessing the environmental and economic benefits of thermal insulation. The results indicated that this investment is beneficial for ecological and economic reasons. Soares et al. [4] provided a survey of the main methods to measure the thermal transmittance and thermal behavior of construction elements such as the insulation materials.In order to promote the most adequate choice, other scientific works found in the literature can also be cited. Firstly, a literature review on determining the optimal thickness of the thermal insulation material in a building envelope and its effect on energy consumption has been carried out by Kaynakli [5]. Kaynakli [6] also investigated some parameters that affect the optimal insulation thickness, such as inflation and discount rates, lifetime, energy costs, the heating/cooling loads, and the properties of the insulation material. The optimal thickness and payback period was determined through an econo...