Efficiency of ventilated facades in terms of airflow in the air gap

Abstract

The gradual exploitation of the natural environment has forced most developed countries to promote ecological solutions and the development of sustainable construction. Ventilated facades perfectly match into this trend, and with their appropriate design, they bring real energy savings. This paper analyzes numerically the influence of the inflowing air, mimicking the wind, on the efficiency of heat removal from the ventilated space and heat transmission by thermal radiation and conduction through the consecutive layers of the external wall. For the purpose of comparison, two variants of ventilated facade were adopted: open and closed joints, at different wind speeds prevailing outside. The results obtained show that in windless weather, the ventilated facade with open joints shows higher heat removal efficiency and thus lower heat transmission to the building interior. At higher wind speeds of 5 m/s, the open-joint and closed-joint ventilated facades achieve similar heat transfer efficiency, and the prevailing temperature inside the building for the two technologies is almost identical. Subsequent increments of incoming wind on the building result in minimal differences in the heat transmission to the building interior, representing changes of about 0.1°C at increments of another 5 m/s of incoming wind. Conscious use of this facade technology, along with appropriate urban design of cities, can help reduce the energy needed to cool buildings during the summer period.