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Heat Fluxes in a Green Façade System: Mathematical Relations and an Experimental Case

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering ((LNCE,volume 67))

Abstract

The need of greater environmental sustainability in today’s living contexts can be significantly coped through the introduction of green infrastructures. Their benefits concern improvement of climate and comfort conditions. Among green infrastructures, vertical greenery systems, applied to buildings, contribute to the energy efficiency of buildings and to the improvement of outdoor and indoor microclimatic conditions. Green façades, a typology of vertical greenings, allow a considerable energy saving for air conditioning, by reducing the surfaces temperature of buildings and increasing the envelope thermal insulation. A realistic description of the functioning of green façades is essential to comprehend the real extent of their advantages. This paper aims to provide a first answer to the need of energy simulation models for green façades’ thermal behavior. The paper proposes a theoretical and an experimental approach. The main heat fluxes involved into the green façade system are investigated and described, by resorting to a schematic representation. The defined mathematical relations are applied to data collected during an experiment on a green façade conducted at the University of Bari. This work represents a contribution to the development of a model to forecast the thermal behavior of green façades and of the microclimate of buildings equipped with them.

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Acknowledgements

The contribution to programming and conducting this research must be equally shared between the Authors. The present work has been carried out under the “Studio di tecniche di realizzazione di un prototipo di edificio con parete verde a microclima controllato per testare il modello del flusso energetico tra la parete verde e la superficie dell’edificio”; Sistema Elettrico Nazionale, Progetto D.1 ‘Tecnologie per costruire gli edifici del futuro’, Piano Annuale di Realizzazione (PAR) 2018”, Accordo di Programma Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico—ENEA funded by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development.

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Correspondence to Fabiana Convertino .

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Convertino, F., Scarascia Mugnozza, G., Schettini, E., Vox, G. (2020). Heat Fluxes in a Green Façade System: Mathematical Relations and an Experimental Case. In: Coppola, A., Di Renzo, G., Altieri, G., D'Antonio, P. (eds) Innovative Biosystems Engineering for Sustainable Agriculture, Forestry and Food Production. MID-TERM AIIA 2019. Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, vol 67. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39299-4_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39299-4_21

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-39298-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-39299-4

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