Heat transfer vs environmental impact of modern façade systems

Abstract

The paper makes an in-sight analysis of four actual steel-intensive envelope solutions existing on the market adaptable to steel structural systems. The solutions enable flexible modular construction, fast fabrication and erection times and easy disassembling. The analyses consider the heat transfer analysis including phase shift, amplitude attenuation and temperature amplitude ratio and the energy balance analysis. Considering the sustainability approach, the study is completed by an environmental impact analysis on Life-Cycle, by considering the production and end-of life stages. Although the selected systems from similar thermal resistances, the results show a certain variation of analysed parameters such as amplitude attenuation and temperature amplitude ratio (TAV). The energy balance analysis shows that the heating, solar gain and hot water preparation are responsible for the supplied energy. The emitted house energy break-down is almost equally shared among transmission, ventilation and sewage energies. The Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis proves that the end-of-life of the systems play an important role in the environmental impact of analysed systems, reversing the initial ranking of systems.