Experimental Study on the Dynamic Integration of Pcm in Building Walls for Enhancing Thermal Performance in Summer Condition

Abstract

Passively integrating phase change material into the walls to enhance the thermal performance of the building has been a promising solution in recent years. As the PCM has a high latent heat capacity, it leads to damping the high variations of temperature and provides an obvious benefit in energy saving and indoor comfort. However, the traditional passive integration method of the PCM limited the utilization of the PCM. The thermal resistance between the PCM and the indoors restrains the thermal response of the PCM, and it between the PCM and the outdoors reduces the impact of outdoor heating or cooling on the PCM. In this study, a dynamic PCM integration in the building envelope method was proposed and experimentally investigated. A PCM layer and an air layer were combined to be integrated into the wall assembly, which allows the position of the PCM layer and the air layer could be changed to adjust the thermal resistance (air layer) between the PCM and indoors and outdoors.

Keywords: Phase change material, building envelope, dynamic integration, thermal performance.