Effect of Air Space Thickness within the External Walls on the Dynamic Thermal Behaviour of Building Envelopes for Energy Efficient Building Construction

Abstract

This paper presents the comprehensive investigation of the effect divided air space thickness within the wall on unsteady heat transfer characteristics such as thermal transmittance, thermal admittance, decrement factor and time lag of five building material walls for energy efficient building enclosure design. The five building material composite walls such as laterite stone, mud brick, cellular concrete, dense concrete and cinder concrete with total thirty configurations were studied. A computer simulation program was developed to compute unsteady heat transfer characteristics using the cyclic admittance procedure. From the results, it is observed that the decrement factor decreases with the increase in the divided air space thickness within the composite wall for all building materials. Dense concrete was observed to be the energy efficient from the lowest decrement factor point of view among five studied building materials. Dense concrete decrement factor decreases by 23.65% for 0.02 m air space thickness compared to the conventional composite wall without air space. It is also noticed that the time lag increases with the increase in the divided air space thickness within the composite wall for all building materials. Cellular concrete was observed to be the energy efficient from highest time lag perspective among five studied building materials. Cellular concrete time lag increases by 6.23% for 0.02 m air space thickness compared to the conventional composite wall without air space. The results of the study help in designing energy efficient building enclosures. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.