Veronica Lucia Castaldo

Traditional and Innovative Materials for Energy Efficiency in Buildings

This chapter shows the most recent and innovative contributions and research trends arounbd the wide issue of energy efficiency in buildings by means of passive techniques, such as new effective materials for building envelope optimization. In particular, cool materials will be dealt with by considering their capability to keep a surface cooler than other solutions when exposed to solar radiation. Then multifunctional materials such as thermal and acoustic insulation panels will be analyzed. Finbally, natural and biobased solutions for energy saving will be investigated. Each one of these topics will be studied by elaborating a first general assessment of each technique and then by analyzing the most recent contributions and research trends in order to provide a wide perspective of the question that is going to be addressed in this chapter.

Simulating the Thermal-Energy Performance of Buildings at the Urban Scale: Evaluation of Inter-Building Effects in Different Urban Configurations

Abstract The reduction of the energy use of buildings at the urban scale represents a key research and design topic with the purpose of developing specific methods for saving energy in buildings. These methods are often focused on the analysis of building thermal-energy behavior by considering the building as a stand-alone object. In this perspective, the thermal-energy behavior of two buildings in New York City is evaluated in this paper with varying urban contexts, in order to evaluate the Inter-Building Effect (IBE). The IBE analysis shows that the inaccuracy in neglecting the urban context in building modeling varies from 9.6 percent, to 71.9 percent. These results confirm that, in order to make accurate predictions about building thermal-energy performance in real urban contexts through dynamic simulation, the interaction between the building and the urban surrounding should be taken into account, in particular in dense urban areas.

Nanotech-Based Cool Materials for Building Energy Efficiency

Cool materials represent an interesting and acknowledged solution able to produce a threefold benefit: the reduction of cooling energy needs in buildings, the mitigation of the urban heat island phenomenon, the counterbalance of global warming trend at larger scale. In fact, they are environmentally friendly and relatively cost-effective materials characterized by high solar reflectance and infrared thermal emittance properties. Therefore, they are helpful to mitigate the urban microclimate by decreasing air and surface temperature when applied over building envelopes, i.e., roofs and walls, and urban paving surfaces. This chapter will discuss about the key research contributions to the development and testing of such cool materials’ effectiveness with a specific focus on the material engineering and characterization. More in details, the recent nanoscale developments will be addressed and the main applications of cool materials will be discussed in order to provide quantitative and quantitative assessment of the effectiveness of such technology for building energy efficiency.

Microclimate Mitigation for Reducing Summer Overheating in Historic Districts

The present work analyzes the local microclimate of different areas in central Italy, with particular attention to an historic district, by means of coupled experimental and numerical approach. Four different areas characterized by different boundary conditions in terms of buildings’ density, construction materials, and amount of greenery are selected as case study. The monitoring campaign shows how buildings’ density and greenery percentage are able to considerably affect the daily temperature ranges by generating a night cooling up to 5°C between dense urban areas and green suburban areas. Additionally, the urban area with the highest vegetation percentage presents the lowest temperature fluctuation, i.e. 16.1°C during the day, despite the highest sky view factor, due to the vegetation buffering effect. The numerical analysis highlights the major role of greenery in generating temperature drops in summer (i.e. -0.8°C). Key-words Urban microclimate; Urban Heat Island; Experimental monitoring; Microclimate simulation