Energy Performances Assessment of Extruded and 3D Printed Polymers Integrated into Building Envelopes for a South Italian Case Study

Abstract

Plastic materials are increasingly becoming used in the building envelope, despite a lack of investigation on their effects. In this work, an extruded Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene panel has been tested as a second-skin layer in a ventilated facade system using a full-scale facility. The experimental results show that it is possible to achieve performances very similar to conventional materials. A numerical model has then been developed and used to investigate the performances of plastic and composite polymer panels as second-skin layers. The experimental data has been used to verify the behavior of the numerical model, from a thermal point of view, showing good reliability, with a root mean square error lower than 0.40 °C. This model has then been applied in different refurbishment cases upon varying: the polymer and the manufacturing technology (extruded or 3D-printed panels). Eight refurbishment case studies have been carried out on a typical office building located in Napoli (Italy), by means of a dynamic simulation software. The simulation results show that the proposed actions allow the reduction of the thermal and cooling energy demand (up to 6.9% and 3.1%, respectively), as well as the non-renewable primary energy consumption (up to 2.6%), in comparison to the reference case study.

Passive Strategies for Building Retrofitting: Performances Analysis and Incentive Policies for the Iranian Scenario

“…Arguably, when considering the advantages of the SS facade systems, the analysis should also focus on the architectural value of the building. In previous works [17,31,32], the authors have investigated the use of SS facade systems, in particular where historical or old buildings represent the building stock, where SS structures may be the only feasible retrofit solution, both for short and long term renovations, thanks to their non-invasiveness and lightness. In these cases, SS facade systems can provide energy and environmental benefits while also providing for an increase in the building's value.…”

“…In addition, passive retrofit actions are usually less invasive, allowing for renovations without changing the structure of historical buildings [26]. One of the most useful passive strategies to decrease energy usage in buildings is installing a second-skin (SS) facade system [17,20,23,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. The SS facade systems consist of a standard facade, an air cavity, and an additional external skin.…”

“…The SS facade systems consist of a standard facade, an air cavity, and an additional external skin. According to [17,20,23,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34], the proper design of the SS facade systems can lead to several environmental and economic advantages; these benefits can be summarized as:…”

“…In addition, when new building envelope components have been developed and tested only in the laboratory [17,32,41], before realizing a real case study, the simulation can help to verify the energy and economic feasibility. Nowadays, the software often used in the literature [31,[42][43][44][45][46][47] to simulate building performance includes EnergyPlus [48], TRNSYS [49], IDA ICE [50], and IES VE [51]. Depending on the final purpose and the user perspective, each of these types of software could be the most appropriate; however, according to [42,43], the dynamic simulation software TRNSYS is the most complete and appears to be the better performing software when studying the heat flux through a building component.…”

“…The literature review [17,20,23,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] highlighted a number of benefits achievable using the SS facade system. In addition, the part of the literature review related to the Iranian climate [27][28][29][30]35,36] highlighted that: (i) all the analyzed researches are focused on temperate climates, (ii) glass is usually used as SS material, and (iii) only one research evaluated the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions.…”