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Multi-glazing (including double-glazing) windows have attracted increasing attention in recent years due to their effective performance in saving energy consumption. The common medium between two glass panes is stationary air or inert gas and it could be treated as an extra component in multi-glazing windows. This opens possibilities to apply different fluids and promising filling materials, including airflows, flowing liquids, aerogels and phase change materials (PCMs), as advanced inter-pane media to further enhance window performance and match different requirements in different climates. To facilitate the application and further development of such application technologies, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive review mainly including: application technologies, performance assessment methods and indicators, and performance analysis of different application technologies. Also, a comparison of the energy saving potentials of different advanced inter-pane mediums in different climates is provided. In addition, suggestions for future works are given based on current progress.

Old buildings represent, in many countries, a great part of the existing building stock. In France this amounts to more than 30%. It is important that they are retrofitted to improve energy performance. To compare reliable retrofitting measures, it is crucial to know their thermal and energy behaviour, their typological characteristics, the building techniques used and their heating and ventilation systems. This paper presents the results of long-term field measurements in a historical dwelling built in 1906 in Paris. In addition to the architectural and thermo-physical features of the whole building, the characteristics of the equipment, and the daily and weekly occupation profiles, indoor air temperature, relative humidity, hourly climatic data (air temperature and humidity, wind direction and velocity, solar irradiation) and hourly energy consumption were measured for an entire year. A thermo-aeraulic model of this dwelling was developed using the TrnSys-Comis® environment and the results are p...

In many countries, there is a great number of old buildings with local architectural, patrimonial, aesthetic and historic interest. They are the products of the vernacular traditional architecture fully integrating the environmental, social and economic local constraints. Moreover, this built inheritance is more heterogeneous than the modern stock of existing buildings. The historical buildings were built with different architectural designs featuring local styles of construction, different techniques and historical expertise. By experience, the actors of the building sector know that the thermal behaviour of historical buildings are not those of modern buildings set up at the time of the industrial period. However, they do not have assessed these specific thermal characteristics of historical buildings. This paper describes the complexity of architectural designs of historical dwellings in France. A field investigation during one year highlights various thermal characteristics of 11 dwellings. It provides a new understanding of thermal behaviour of these historical dwellings. The results show the thermal characteristics of historical dwellings and their differences with modern architecture.

With the actual environmental issues of energy savings in buildings, there are more efforts to prevent any increase in energy use associated with installing air-conditioning systems. The actual standard of thermal comfort in buildings ISO 7730 is based on static model that is acceptable in air-conditioned buildings, but unreliable for the case of naturally ventilated buildings. The different field studies have shown that occupants of naturally ventilated buildings accept and prefer a significantly wider range of temperatures compared to occupants of air-conditioned buildings. The results of these field studies have contributed to develop the adaptive approach. Adaptive comfort algorithms have been integrated in EN15251 and ASHRAE standards to take into account the adaptive approach in naturally ventilated buildings. These adaptive algorithms seem to be more efficient for naturally ventilated buildings, but need to be assessed in field studies. This paper evaluates different algorithms from both static and adaptive approach in naturally ventilated buildings across a field survey that has been conducted in France in five naturally ventilated office buildings. The paper presents the methodology guidelines, and the thermal comfort algorithms considered. The results of application of different algorithms are provided with a comparative analysis to assess the applied algorithms.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate summer thermal inertia in high porosity limestone old buildings. These buildings have to be retrofitted to save energy. Consequently, this paper focuses on the effects of insulation on this property. Monitoring surveys were carried out in an experimental room and in five single-family houses. In summer, thermal inertia may vary in a same building according to the localization of the room and the insulation. The analysis of monitoring data before and after insulation of the experimental room allows to highlight the improvement of thermal inertia of the room thanks to insulation: the decrement factor is divided by 10 and the time lag increases by 4 h. These results are confirmed by single-family houses measurements. The decrement factors of insulated limestone rooms are lower (0.10) than non-insulated ones (0.17) and the time lag increases by 3 h with insulation. Insulation of Tuffeau stone rooms does not cause overheating conditions in summer. These results indicate the benefit of insulation on this passive design. For these buildings, insulation reduces the temperature amplitude in summer and delays the maximum of temperature during the night.