Simulating solar shading effects in sustainable buildings

The envelope performance play a crucial role in building energy balance and can significantly contribute to reduce both fuels consumption of heating and cooling equipments and the related GHG emission, helping to assure the suitable levels of indoor comfort, with low energy needs. Aiming at this goal, the envelope thermal efficiency must be optimized towards the moody external conditions: the most effective way to perform this result is by designing the building elements as multi-layer assembling of different materials, in order to meet the complex set of requirements that a single material cannot satisfy. Due to their relatively recent and limited market diffusion yet, the effects of these think coated building materials are difficult to assess and reliable design criteria are still unavailable. The results achieved by our research on this topics are: - a catalogue of the market available coated building materials whit enhanced optical or thermal performances, including detailed technical data of each of them - a software tool able to simulate the optical and thermal performances of the coated building surface, for different coatings and different solar irradiation conditions. Based on the LT scheme developed by Cambridge Martin Centre (UK), the tool can be easily used at the sketch design stage already, providing a comparison between different solar screen devices applicable in sustainable buildings.