Computational design of an energy-efficient thermal switch as building wall element

Abstract

A dynamic insulation material is a smart material that can be used for designing adaptive dynamic building wall systems, which actively control the energy and mass transfer between the outside environment and the indoor of the building. In this work, an optimization methodology is implemented to design customized dynamic insulation materials for building wall elements. Two different locations are chosen as case studies: Sauce Viejo (Argentina) and Frankfurt (Germany). By analyzing the relationship between the heat flux and the thermal gradient to which the wall is exposed, it is shown that the wall element must behave as a thermal switch to optimize the energy performance of the system. It is found that an optimized thermal switch could reduce undesired heat loads of a building wall element between 8% and 10% in comparison with a typical insulation material and it has a better capability to evacuate the heat in order to reduce internal heat gains, showing that a thermal switch can be good candidate for designing energy-efficient building wall elements.