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Project

Evaluation of the Impact of Energy Renovation Measures: Experimental Study of Residential Buildings

The energy efficiency of buildings is a major focus to decrease the emission of greenhouse gases and limit the global warming. Besides strict standards for new buildings, existing buildings have at least as much potential for savings. Therefore, this research focuses on the renovation of residential buildings. The most important goal of the research is to assess what renovation measures and techniques result in the largest savings. Additionally, a multi-criteria analysis scrutinizes whether the energetic renovation is compatible with other structural or architectural principles.

To define the effectivity of the renovation techniques, the research consists of the following parts:

In a first part, potential renovation measures and techniques are mapped. The  measures which are analyzed may aim at improving the building envelope or the building services. For example on one hand different measures to renovate a façade will be listed: total or partial prefabrication of a wall versus rather traditional renovation techniques. On the other hand different heating systems and applications of renewable energy are determined. These techniques will then be assessed in the next sections. To be able to perform a multi-criteria analysis, the most important performance requirements will be listed at various levels. As stated, these will not only incorporate energy performance, but also hygrothermal performances, cost, sustainability, etc.

The second step includes the development of a method to determine the difference between the actual and the theoretical effectivity of the techniques, which will be examined with simulations as well as measurements. Most attention goes to the energetic performance, keeping the performance requirements of the first part in mind. The measurements have to estimate the actual performance of a renovation technique, while simulations and calculations determine the expected performance. The actual expected performance is then measured and compared against the predictions. In case of discrepancies, further detailed simulation and additional measurements will help to clarify these differences. Finally, the developed method will be conferred with existing simulation methods and / or design tools.

In a third step the developed methodology will be generalized by applying it to dwellings of different IWT-pilot projects. The approach described above will be repeated: the results of the monitoring before and after renovation will be compared to infer the improvement of performance of the components of the building. Secondly, the performance of the renovated dwellings will be simulated. Afterwards, the problems causing the differences between simulation and monitoring will be identified and tackled. The goal is to determine which technique has the best efficiency and to find out if the techniques with the highest effectivity also perform well for other performances such as sustainability and buildability.

Date:21 Apr 2016 →  20 Apr 2021
Keywords:Renovation, Energy efficiency
Disciplines:Structural engineering, Other civil and building engineering
Project type:PhD project