Mathematical Investigation of Climate Adaptive Building Shell

Abstract

The European Parliament and Council Directive 2010/31/EU states that all member states of EU shall ensure that all new buildings are nearly zero-energy after December 31 2020. For now, there are no efficient, cost effective and widely used tools to achieve such performance. To achieve the goal set out in the legislation there is a need for an appropriate solution in order to minimize energy consumption of a building or obtain energy on site from renewable resources. The first method to achieve it is to minimize heat losses through the envelope of a building in winter and prevent overheating in summer. Traditional construction types used in buildings have static thermal properties. There is an energy efficiency potential in dynamic thermal properties of building constructions. Ideas for such constructions can be found in nature following the biomimicry methodology that solves human problems inspired by processes in nature. In this paper a feasibility is studied of one proposed CABS (Climate Adaptive Building Shell) using a numerical analysis. The proposed CABS is a system where geothermal energy is used for façade heating thus minimizing heat losses through building envelope and utilizing renewable energy. A geothermal heat from shallow depth of 3.2 m is utilized. The CABS consists of a piping system built in the façade of a building ensuring a circulation of a heat-transfer medium which is transporting the heat from the ground where the temperature is constant all year to the façade. Circulation of a fluid is ensured by buoyancy forces alone. The resulting rise of façade temperature reduces peak primary energy demand thus improving building performance. The mechanism of this CABS is inspired by the blood vessel system in animals. For the numerical analysis ANSYS Fluent 16.2 is used.