Outdoor test cells for building envelope experimental characterisation – A literature review

Abstract

In the past decades the construction sector experienced the diffusion of a wide variety of complex building envelope components and passive elements and strategies, characterized by a dynamic response to the climatic parameters. Many of these components have been claimed to contribute to reducing building energy use and improving occupants' comfort. These kind of envelope elements need nevertheless to be tested under laboratory and real dynamic weather conditions in order to characterise, and possibly to model, their behaviour and their effectiveness both in terms of energy saving and indoor environmental quality. Both indoor laboratories and outdoor test cells have been developed in order to tackle the challenging issue of experimentally characterising innovative envelope elements. However, not always the experimental methodologies are fully and explicitly described in the available literature, and they are rarely compared to other types of experimental procedures. The aim of the present paper is to describe and review recent state of the art technologies for outdoor test cells. The paper starts with a short introduction on potentialities and limitations of outdoor facilities with respect to indoor laboratories and real buildings field tests, and it continues with a detailed classification and description of the most relevant outdoor test cells developed in recent years.

Current trends and future challenges in the performance assessment of adaptive façade systems

“…Table 2 , categorizes those levels following an object-based logic that decomposes the façade system as a material, as a component, as a system and as part of a building. [11,33,82,60,17,48] . Material [19,49,71,18,59,64,70,31,32] The complexity of facades and in particular high-performance facades makes it intersect with different domains of knowledge.…”

Empirical validation and local sensitivity analysis of a lumped-parameter thermal model of an outdoor test cell

“…[12] and Cattarin et al [13]. In addition, the literature review by Cattarin et al [14] presents an overview of experimental studies that used outdoor test cell facilities to validate airflow and daylight models and to characterize the performance of single building components or control systems. The review reports and discusses also the potential sources of discrepancy between measurements and numerical predictions.…”

“…Each test cell is surrounded by a dedicated guard zone, thus allowing for «parallel tests of the same building envelope technology/equipment with different indoor air temperature set-points, occupancy schedules or operations», as reported by Causone et al [32]. Hence, the facility can be classified, following the criteria proposed by Cattarin et al [14], as comparative and absolute-guarded, since it is conceived to (i) simultaneously expose to the same external environment two building components installed on the south façade (comparative approach) and/or (ii) carry out performance assessments by means of a calorimetric measurement in each cell (performance expressed in absolute terms, in a guarded cell). Table 1 and Table 2.…”

Design of a New Full-scale Facility for Building Envelope Test: FACT (FACade Tool)

“…test cell surrounded with a guarded zone, in order to reduce the energy flow of the lateral wall), suitable for comparative test, was avoided to have a test configuration closer to reality. For these reasons the experimental activity in FACT will be coupled with simulations to evaluate absolute performance of the building technologies in a calibrated test cells [13]. In any case, given the dimension of the facility, the possibility to build a box inside the box, in order to create a guarded zone, is still open for specific project.…”

“…A recently published work on existing outdoor test cells, reports a classification of outdoor facility showing an extensive use of these utilities in the scientific community [11][12][13].…”