Emerging thermal technologies of building facades - the missing links in energy performance simulation

The growing need to adapt the construction industry to climate change, and growing requirements for energy efficiency, resulted in the development of innovative building fa & ccedil;ade solutions. While new technologies are continuously developed and experimentally tested, parallel studies focus on the computational simulations of their performance. This work presents selected emerging technologies, discusses their strong and weak points and finally defines the physical processes necessary to be considered during building performance simulation. The following emerging fa & ccedil;ade technologies are considered in the paper: heat pipe fa & ccedil;ades, pipe-embedded fa & ccedil;ades, evaporative cooled fa & ccedil;ades and thermoelectric fa & ccedil;ades. The physical models for each fa & ccedil;ade system were briefly illustrated based on the fundamental research studies. The authors discussed the strong and weak points of considered technologies, gaps in building performance simulation and future scenarios of building design and refurbishment. Finally, the discussion indicates the direction of future work in the field of numerical simulations of discussed technologies.