Impact of thermal inertia coupled to natural night ventilation. A case study for a high performance building in continental climate

Abstract

In summer time, thermal inertia appears as a passive solution to improve the thermal comfort in many part of Europe. The objective of this paper is in a first step to generate thermal comfort data from energy efficient houses in summer time with a focus on the impact of thermal inertia and natural night ventilation. In a second step, numerical simulation are run on these configurations to compare their construction systems. This work confirms the positive impact of both thermal inertia and natural night ventilation on the thermal comfort for energy efficient buildings in continental climate. It also allows to quantify the difference of indoor air temperature on this case study and to ensure the reliability of the numerical models. Finally, contrary to what is mentioned in many papers, no significant time lags between the heavy and the light weight envelope have been highlighted.