Investigation on Thermal Performance of an Integrated Phase Change Material Blind System for Double Skin Façade Buildings

Abstract

Double skin facades (DSFs) are widely recognised as sustainable design elements for reducing energy consumption in buildings. However overheating problems in DSFs in warm seasons have been reported in various studies which may cause additional increase in cooling loads in buildings. Although various thermal management strategies and devices are available, they do have some limitations and cannot be readily used for enhancing the performance of DSFs. This paper focuses on both experimental and numerical evaluations on the thermal performance of an integrated phase change material (PCM) blind system for DSF buildings. The numerical models were validated with experimental data in a DSF test facility integrated with the developed prototype. Temperature and heat flux profiles in the DSF integrated with the proposed PCM blind system and aluminium blind were simulated and compared by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. The experimental results indicated that the system was able to stabilise the average temperature in the DSF to about 36 °C in summer days with no significant increase as compared with ambient temperature. Further theoretical evaluations also showed that in comparison with basic aluminium blind, the PCM blind can reduce the air temperature as well as absorbing more heat gain in DSF. Even though the developed system has demonstrated some level of capacity to mitigate the overheating phenomenon in DSF, there is need for further research in optimising the geometry of the system and improving the energy storage efficiency of the PCM.