A numerical algorithm for carrying out “whole building hourly analyses” on PCM containing buildings

Abstract

Paper presented at the XXXIII IAHS World Congress on Housing, 27-30 September 2005,"Transforming Housing Environments through Design", University of Pretoria.

The adoption of Phase Change Materials (PCM) in building elements constitutes a promising method for solving problems of high energetic consumption, due to the conditioning of buildings in climatic contexts characterized by strong solar radiation. Reliable calculation methods for carrying out “Whole Building Analysis” of buildings with PCM, according to the automated computational methods more generally used and based on transfer function method, were not developed very much. This contribution illustrates a new technique based on the transfer function method, in order to obtain the heat and temperature values of the extreme surfaces of building envelopes, built with the insertion of PCM. The proposed methodology allows simulating the behavior of walls containing such materials and can be easily integrated in any software for Whole Building analyses, presently on the market, without changing their basic algorithm structure. The numerical consistency and the reliability of the simulated behaviour results have been demonstrated through a comparison with Finite Element method computation, already validated.