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Premises for wine storage and ageing call for a specific indoor climate, which can require high energy consumptions. Underground buildings have the potential to reduce energy demand in comparison to conventional aboveground buildings, by exploiting soil temperatures and ground cover. But the building–underground interaction is site-dependent, therefore an accurate design must take into account every aspect of the thermal interface between them. The objective of the study is to identify the time variations of temperature distributions related to ground layers involved in the interaction with underground buildings in the wine sector. The experimental monitoring system for surface ground temperature and shallow temperature beside and below an underground cellar is described. Based on data acquired, a numerical interpretative and predictive model for temperature behaviour in surface and shallow layers was developed. The model was calibrated through specific parameters able to account for the interaction with buildings. The equations developed proved suitable to reproduce the phenomena surveyed. Therefore, they allow to correctly design the interface between underground buildings and the terrain, on the basis of temperature data which can be surveyed in the soil at different depths, or within already existing underground artefacts.

Wine storage building should be designed to maintain specific indoor temperature conditions to ensure wine preservation. With this purpose, the goal of this study is the identification of an effective and efficient modeling approach suitable for common typologies of wine storage buildings. The specific aim is the assessment of the reliability and precision of different solutions for the discretization in thermal zones of the internal volume through horizontal “airwalls”, based on the comparison between digital simulation outputs with real recorded thermal data. Two different modeling approaches are analyzed through EnergyPlus thermal simulation software, by considering internal space consisting of one or two thermal zones. Simulation results are compared with data monitored for three years over a significant study case, and undergo a validation and acceptability procedure. The method proved to be a valid tool to assess results reliability in aboveground building modeling. The correctness of the use of “airwall” as horizontal partition was also verified. Results could help designers to optimize the building energy modeling.