Influence of enclosure masonry walls on energy consumption of buildings

Abstract

The growing demands concerning thermal comfort and energy efficiency of buildings has motivated significant changes on the construction of enclosure walls in order to improve their thermal insulation capability. Moreover, masonry walls play an important role on the thermal behaviour of buildings given their ability to retain and release heat during the weather seasons. However, in order to evaluate properly the impact of masonry walls on energy consumption and thermal comfort of buildings, dynamic regime analysis must be performed. In this paper, thermal dynamic analysis were performed through numerical simulations in order to analyse the influence of enclosure masonry walls on the energy consumption of buildings without HVAC systems installed. The simultaneous influence of several factors were taken into account, such as indoor ventilation, glazing orientation, occupancy, local weathers, and thermal resistance of external walls. Since there is a wide range of weather conditions, housing typologies and possible uses for the buildings, a set of conditions established for Portugal were used in the simulations: two different weather conditions and three of the most common housing typologies built with different enclosure masonry wall systems. From the obtained results it was concluded that the housing typology can reduce the energy consumption of buildings. Moreover, the use of masonry walls with improved thermal resistance can reduce more significantly the energy consumption in the heating season. On the other hand, depending on the ratio between glazing and opaque areas, the importance of the wall thermal resistance may not be as relevant given the possible use of glazing elements, especially in the cooling season and when the glazing is south orientated. (c) 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, London.