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In the coming years, heat waves will be more and more frequent and severe. New buildings must ensure thermal comfort to the occupants despite hot summer conditions, using passive elements, such as solar shadings, night ventilation, limitations of heat gains. The real performance of such systems is very sensitive to occupants’ actions in the case of un-automated systems. In order to better understand and quantify the influence of different occupants’ actions (window opening, solar shading closing, etc) on the building thermal response, novel cooling indicators are proposed based on building energy simulation and global temporal sensitivity analyses. Partial signed variances are used to quantify the impact of each action in terms of intensity and duration. In the present work two indicators are proposed and discussed: cooling indicator and global cooling indicator. They are applied on a case study of an energy efficient detached house constructed in France. 1000 simulations are run, with random selection of actions’ parameters. Maximal temperatures in the main bedroom reach values between 27 and 33°C and are strongly impacted by night ventilation. The proposed cooling indicators aggregate the vast amount of information provided by the simulations and temporal sensitivity analyses and facilitate detailed investigations and comparative studies.

Rammed earth construction is built by compacting humid soil into formworks layer by layer, using clay fraction as only binder between the grains, without firing procedure. At this stage, the material is unsaturated, and capillary forces thus act to add cohesion between particles. Indeed, a peculiarity of this material is its high hygroscopic capacity, which allows water vapor to be absorbed and desorbed into the clay matrix. The variation of hydric state in the material leads to a variety of mechanical and thermal properties. Consequently, the complexity in studying this material is due to the strong dependence of many parameters on the moisture content and still few data are available in the literature on this subject for rammed earth materials. A soil used for an existing rammed earth building in Lyon is here characterized in order to determine its hygrothermal properties. Earth conductivity was firstly characterized in a reference dry state, then the influence of humidity variations was investigated. Sorption and desorption isotherms were determined to investigate the ability of the material to store and release humidity. Thermal conductivities were measured at different relative humidity, to put into evidence the influence of environmental conditions.

A Demand-controlled ventilation (DCV) has been recognized as a promising solution for decreasing energy consumption while ensuring good Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in buildings. However, its application in the residential sector has increased first recently. Implementation of DCV systems brings the problem related to assessing their performance, not only in the view of energy savings but also in the ability to ensure IAQ. The objectives of this paper were to introduce a multicriteria performance-based approach for the evaluation of residential ventilation systems with CONTAM airflows simulations; illustrate its applicability to three DCV strategies in the context of renovated apartment buildings in Denmark and challenge the minimal background airflow requirements anchored in the Danish building code. Our performance-based approach allows assessing ventilation performance regarding IAQ (CO2, humidity, PM2.5, and formaldehyde-based indicators), energy consumption, and ventilation heat loss. Our results show that DCV strategies can improve IAQ while decreasing airflows. For example, application of DCV reduced the cumulative indicator of occupant exposure to formaldehyde, IHCHO by 6 to 28 %, compared to the constant-airflow system. For humidity controlled mechanical exhaust ventilation, the heat loss can be reduced up 51%.

The building materials used indoors constantly interact with the environment in which the occupants live. Recent studies have shown that natural materials, such as wood, can improve human well-being. In addition, the building materials facing the indoor air are able to adsorb and desorb water vapour from their surface and exchange it with the surrounding air. This mass exchange comes along with heat exchange, modifying their surface temperature, and thus the indoor environment. Therefore, in this article, we are investigating whether moisture buffering has an impact on comfort. For this purpose, room-scale numerical simulations have been carried out with WUFI Plus, comparing two types of interior cladding materials: painted plasterboards and a raw spruce panelling. The results show a slightly lower surface temperature and air temperature during the summer period when using spruce. A higher hygroscopicity of the spruce than the gypsum can explain this difference in behaviour between the two studied materials. Thus, spruce exchanges more latent heat with the surrounding air. However, only this thermal difference cannot explain the difference in comfort perception between the gypsum and the wood.

Due to the environmental impact of building materials, researches on sustainable materials, such as bio-based and earth materials, are now widespread. These materials offer numerous qualities such as their availability, recyclability and their ability to dampen the indoor relative humidity variations due to their hygroscopicity. As these materials can absorb large amount of humidity, numerical and experimental studies of their hygrothermal behaviour are crucial to assess their durability. To validate a hygrothermal model, numerical and experimental data have to be confronted. Such confrontation must take into consideration the uncertainties related to the experimental protocol, but also to the model. Statistical tools such as uncertainty and global sensitivity analysis are essential for this task. The uncertainty analysis estimates the robustness of the model, while the global sensitivity analysis identifies the most influential input(s) responsible for this robustness. However, these methods are not commonly used because of the complexity of hygrothermal models, and therefore the prohibitive simulation cost. This study presents a methodology for comparing the numerical and experimental data of a rammed earth wall subjected to varying temperature and relative humidity conditions. The main objectives are the investigation of the uncertainties impact, the estimation of the model robustness, and finally the identification of the input(s) responsible for the discrepancies between numerical and experimental data. To do so, a recent and low-cost global variance-based sensitivity method, named RBD-FAST, is applied. First, the uncertainty propagation through the model is calculated, then the sensitivity indices are estimated. They represent the part of the output variability related to each input variability. The output of interest is the vapour pressure in the middle of the wall to confront it to the experimental measurement. Good agreement is obtained between the experimental and numerical results. It is also highlighted that the sorption isotherm is the main factor influencing the vapour pressure in the material.

The hygric characterisation of authentic rammed earth materials is presented. Since these materials expand and liquefy upon contact with moisture, currently available methods are adapted to deal with this material evolution during the tests. In particular a thin permeable wick is introduced in the capillary absorption test. Moreover, confined and unconfined ways of testing are addressed. The results show that both the material origin and the material evolution can significantly impact the hygric properties.