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This paper investigates the influence of occupant lifestyle patterns on the energy performance of the residential buildings with various building envelopes in different climate zones. For this purpose, an existing multi-family apartment building in Iran was selected as the experimental residential building and the validity of energy simulation was examined based on the real data of the building energy consumption. The energy demand of the building before and after renovation was simulated via EnergyPlus for different climate zones. The sensitivity analyses confirmed that the occupants’ behavior has a significant impact on the building's thermal energy usage especially in hot climate areas and can change the heating and cooling loads up to about 90%. Using the validated model, a parametric study was performed to investigate the influences of the occupant's behavior on the efficiency of the building envelope including window and cladding materials in different climate zones. The results show that the interaction between the occupants’ behaviors and envelope materials is significant in that the occupant behaviors can change the strategy of choosing the envelop material types. Fluctuation of thermal energy consumption caused by changing of window types can rise to 20% for this case study. Also, it is shown that underestimating the level of occupancy loads can exaggerate the effects of the envelope on the thermal energy consumption rate. Overall, this study emphasizes the importance of applying near actual user behavior data on energy simulation analyses performed for the studies of building sustainability and lifecycle assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Directives in the European Union are ensuring that buildings in this region are moving towards nearly zero energy buildings (NZEB). For countries like Ireland, which has a temperate oceanic climate, a key to achieving NZEB is to have high thermal and air tightness performances of the building envelope. Consequently, as the operational energy of the building reduces, the embodied energy (and embodied global warming potential) typically increases as a proportion of the lifecycle energy of the building due to increased embodied energy of the building envelope and the lower operational energy. In order to assess if a design strategy is in fact sustainable, it is becoming essential to evaluate environmental and economic LCA of building design strategies. This paper presents the outcomes of a number of case study buildings in Ireland, which focuses on the full environmental and economic lifecycle assessment of buildings to assess the impact changes in building regulations are having on the contribution of both the construction and operation of a building's lifecycle as they move towards NZEB standards. If designed with a focus on achieving a high thermal and air tightness, a building with an embodied energy intensity less than a building that achieves compliance with 2011 Irish building energy performance regulations can achieve a NZEB standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade textile architecture has become increasingly popular: fabrics and foils are more and more used as skins for permanent and enclosed buildings. The thermal-physical behavior of air-supported membrane structures, characterized by low thermal inertia and poor insulation, is definitely different from the traditional architectures, although required comfort levels are often similar. While the thermal behavior of the wider spread ETFE foil cushion system is still investigated, a quantitative assessment of the double-layered fabric skin energy performance is still lacking. This paper studies the latter membrane system, focusing on the evolution of air-supported envelopes for sports halls, from single layer to double layer membranes, either based on pneumatic cushions or on continuous air gaps. By performing measurements on running sports halls and dynamic simulations, the winter energy performance, the comfort conditions and the internal surfaces condensation risk of a typical sport hall in Northern Italy are evaluated. An insight is given into the envelopes dynamic behavior and energy balance. Double layers envelopes allow saving from 11% to 18% of the heating energy compared to single layer. Moreover, further energy saving strategies are proposed and quantified, considering low-emissivity coatings, reduction of the cracks areas, modifying indoor air set points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]