Advanced Building Physics

The module consists of:

Theory of heat, air and moisture (HAM) transfer in buildings and construction materials

• Convective, radiative and conductive heat transfer

• Dynamic thermal models

• Basic numerical approach for heat transfer modelling

• Natural ventilation and infiltration

• Convective and diffusive moisture transfer

• Moisture storage in materials

• Basic numerical approach for moisture transfer modelling

• Indoor thermal quality

Theory of room acoustics and sound absorption:

• Room acoustics

• reverberation time

• energy balance of a room

• influence of sound absorption

• sound pressure level inside

• indoor acoustical quality

Sound absorption:

• porous absorbers

• panel absorbers

• Helmholtz absorbers

• quarter wave pipes

Sound simulations:

• geometrical acoustics

• Image Source Modelling

• Ray tracing

Theory of lighting

• daylight and solar radiation properties (units, instruments, spectra, etc)

• electric lighting types and properties (CCT, luminous efficacy, etc)

• solar exposure studies, effectiveness of PV, urban farming

• blinds and effective sun shading, complex fenestration systems

• static and dynamic simulation methods and metrics (Daylight Factor, Climate-Based Daylight Modelling and related metrics)

• non-visual effects of light on health and wellbeing

• indoor visual quality and glare assessments

Theory of computational fluid dynamics

• Reynolds dependence

• Mesh dependence

• Effect of surface to surface radiation

• Hvac translation concepts

• Convection and prism layers

Study assignments (choose 2 topics out of 4):

Heat, air and mass transfer assignment

You will analyse a problem in the area of building physics related to the heat/air/moisture (HAM) quality of a building component, installation, room or building. Matlab/Simulink will be used to solve the problem.

Acoustics assignment

You will analyse a problem in the area of building physics related to the acoustical quality of a building room. State-of-the-art modelling software will be used and possibly measurements will be carried out for comparison with modelling results.

Advanced light analysis

You will analyse a realistic design problem related to daylight, or solar radiation, using advanced simulation software (e.g. Radiance, Ladybug)

Computational fluid dynamics

The learned theory of conjugate convective heat transfer will be applied by performing an indoor thermal comfort study involving solar radiation through windows. You will analyse the sensitivity of the results to the meshing and used boundary conditions.