Abstract
The renewed attention paid to raw earth construction in recent decades is linked to its undoubted sustainability, cost-effectiveness, and low embodied energy. In Italy, the use of raw earth as a construction material is limited by the lack of a technical reference standard and is penalised by the current energy legislation for its massive behaviour. Research experiences, especially transoceanic, on highly performative contemporary buildings made with natural materials show that raw earth can be used, together with different types of reinforcements, to create safe, earthquake-resistant, and thermally efficient buildings. On the basis of experimental data of an innovative fibre-reinforced rammed earth material, energy analyses are developed on a rammed earth building designed for a Mediterranean climate. The paper focuses on the influences that different design solutions, inspired by traditional bioclimatic strategies, and various optimised wall constructions have in the improvement of the energy performance of the abovementioned building. These considerations are furthermore compared with different design criteria aiming at minimising embodied carbon in base material choice, costs, and discomfort hours. Results have shown the effectiveness of using the combination of massive rammed earth walls, night cross ventilation, and overhangs for the reduction of energy demand for space cooling and the improvement of wellbeing. Finally, the parametric analysis of thermal insulation has highlighted the economic, environmental, and thermophysical optimal solutions for the rammed earth envelope.
Highlights
As is well known, contemporary society has a strong dependence on the use of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, the so-called non-renewable energy sources which, according to some projections based on the energy consumption scenarios of the last thirty years, will be exhausted by 2050 [1]
A dynamic thermal analysis was run to find the optimised design solutions for rammed earth walls in Mediterranean climates. This analysis is based on experimental data acquired to assess the basic thermal properties of an innovative rammed earth material developed in a joint research project with the Guglielmino Soc
Builder Optimisation works using genetic algorithms (GA) to search for optimal design solutions, in a trade-off analysis on different design variables aiming at two objectives: the best design options are the ones which combine the minimum values for the two objectives, outlining a Pareto Front along the bottom-left part of the data point cloud graph
Summary
Contemporary society has a strong dependence on the use of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, the so-called non-renewable energy sources which, according to some projections based on the energy consumption scenarios of the last thirty years, will be exhausted by 2050 [1]. This scenario is exacerbated by the generalised concern for the health of our planet, which is increasingly affected by climate change, which has been shown to be linked to the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. On the basis of these experimental results, a thermal and energy analysis is implemented to simulate the thermophysical behaviour and energy needs of a rammed earth building designed for the city of Catania, Italy
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