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The energy performance and passive survivability of high thermal insulation buildings in future climate scenarios
Building Simulation 2022, 15 (7): 1209-1225
Published: 21 August 2021
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Downloads:39

Given that the passive performance simulation of buildings based on typical meteorological year data and specific design schemes makes it challenging to respond to climate change and refine design requirements on time, this article established a passive performance prediction model for future buildings considering multi-dimensional variables including climate change, building design, and operational characteristics. For high thermal insulation buildings under future climates, the mild climate zone is more sensitive than the others, cooling energy demand is more sensitive than heating demand, apartments are more sensitive than office buildings, and passive survivability is more sensitive than energy performance; for buildings of the same type located in the same climate zone, thermal design solutions determine the increase rate of cooling demand. The potential benefits of climate warming on heating demand reduction are almost zero, but the cooling demand increases significantly, with apartments and office buildings increasing up to 22.1% and 5.0%, respectively. Buildings generally overheat in the future, and the increase rate of the mild zone far exceeds other zones with duration and severity being 3004.8% and 877.7% for apartments, and 884.3% and 288.9% for office buildings, respectively.

Research Article Issue
Tradeoff between heating energy demand in winter and indoor overheating risk in summer constrained by building standards
Building Simulation 2021, 14 (4): 987-1003
Published: 06 November 2020
Abstract PDF (3.3 MB) Collect
Downloads:32

Evidence indicates that improvement of thermal performance of building envelope has the potential for aggravating the indoor overheating risk in summer. On the other hand, evolving building standards continue to strengthen the requirements for thermal performance to achieve the energy-saving target. Therefore, this study quantifies the interaction effect between building standards-oriented building design, heating energy demand in winter, and indoor overheating risk in summer. Building databases with different energy efficiency levels are generated using a randomly generated method. Uncertain variables include not only 13 design parameters but also the running state of natural ventilation and external shading. The indoor overheating risk is assessed in terms of severity and duration. Finally, a multi-objective optimization model integrating meta-models and the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm is proposed to balance heating energy demand in winter and indoor overheating risk in summer. Results indicate that building standards tend to aggravate overheating risk in summer: the duration and severity of high-performance buildings increased by 40.6% and 24.2% than that of conventional-performance buildings. However, window ventilation could offset the adverse effect, and mitigation of duration and severity can be up to 85.2% and 62.1% for high-performance buildings. Window ventilation can weaken the conflict between heating energy demand in winter and overheating risk in summer. As heating energy demand increased from 6.1 to 67.3 kWh/m2, the overheating risk changes little that the duration of overheating risk decreased from 17.5% to 15.6% and severity decreased from 8.7 °C to 8.3 °C.

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