Effect of dynamic characteristics of building envelope on thermal-energy performance in winter conditions: In field experiment

• Two buildings with same stationary properties and different dynamics are built.
• Results of thermal-energy indoor–outdoor continuous monitoring campaign are analyzed.
• Comparative dynamic behavior of the two buildings is evaluated in winter conditions.
• Energy behavior is equivalent. Field conductance, humidity and temperature differ.
• Impact of building dynamic properties should be considered even in winter condition.

Research about building strategies for energy saving is taking a growing interest worldwide. New solutions for building envelopes require increasingly sophisticated investigation to analyze the thermal-energy in-field dynamic response of constructions. Moreover, in-lab experiments are difficultly able to represent real environment boundary conditions. In this paper, effect of dynamic properties of building opaque envelope is investigated in winter conditions through an extensive continuous monitoring campaign of a dedicated experimental field. The field consists of: two full-scale buildings, an outdoor weather station, and two indoor microclimate stations. The two buildings were designed with the same stationary envelope characteristics, but different envelope technologies, materials and, therefore, different dynamic properties. Nevertheless, following Italian regulations about building energy performance in winter, they should behave the same. With the purpose to verify this hypothesis, a continuous long-term comparative monitoring is developed. The results only partly confirm that simplified hypothesis. In fact, in winter, while the two buildings exhibit equivalent long-term energy behavior, a weak difference is registered in terms of air temperature in free-floating, transient, and operative HVAC systems’ regime. Additionally, non-negligible discrepancies are registered in terms of mean radiant temperature, indoor humidity and internal–external envelope surface temperature, given the different transpiration rate of the two envelope systems and different solar reflectance values of the roofs.