Identification of thermal parameters of a building envelope based on the cooling process of a building object

Abstract

Thermal properties of building envelopes are often described using thermal conductivity or thermal resistance. And the opposite task involves the identification of thermal parameters of building envelopes based on the measurements of their cooling process. In this article, the authors proposed a method of identifying thermal parameters of a building envelope based on cooling measurements, using a multiple regression model for this purpose. To satisfy the research objectives, two basic experiments were carried out. The first experiment was performed in laboratory conditions. The research model was a cube of the dimensions of 1.1 m × 1.1 m × 1.1 m. The second experiment was carried out in semi-real conditions, and the used model was a small house of the dimensions of 6.0 m × 4.15 m × 5.2 m. The measurement results were also used to calibrate numerical models made in the ESP-r program. The research studies have demonstrated that the model can be used to identify thermal parameters of a building envelope. Based on the measurements and simulations, the cooling equations of the object were determined and the 95% confidence interval for the heat retention index was estimated. On that basis, using the multiple regression model, such parameters of the model as density, specific heat, and thermal conductivity were estimated. It turned out that using the Gauss–Newton approximation, we obtained the correlation of the measurement results and the analytical model with the correlation coefficient of 0.9971 (for the laboratory scale). And the multiple regression improved not only the correlation between the measurement and the analytical model, but it also allowed to obtain “almost identical” results. Similarly, promising results were obtained for the semi-real scale.