Abstract
Insulation systems for the floor, roof, and external walls play a prominent role in providing a thermal barrier for the building envelope. Design decisions made for the insulation material type and thickness can alleviate potential impacts on the embodied energy and improve the building thermal performance. This design problem is often addressed using a building information modelling (BIM)-integrated optimisation approach. However, one major weakness that lies in the current studies is that BIM is merely used as the source for design parameters input. This study proposes a BIM-based envelope insulation optimisation design tool using a common software Revit and its extension Dynamo to find the trade-off between the total embodied energy of the insulation system and the thermal performance of the envelope by considering the material type and thickness. In addition, the tool also permits data visualisation in a BIM environment, and automates subsequent material library mapping and instantiates the optimal insulation designs. The framework is tested on a case study based in Sydney, Australia. By analysing sample designs from the Pareto front, it is found that slight improvement in the thermal performance (1.3399 to 1.2112 GJ/m2) would cause the embodied energy to increase by more than 50 times.
Highlights
Introduction and Literature ReviewThe construction industry plays a prominent role in addressing energy use and emissions
As for the insulation design problem, Shadram and Mukkavaara [43] developed an optimisation framework utilising building information modelling (BIM) for placing insulations focusing on the embodied energy and the operational energy, which is obtained from the simulation results, featuring modelling software Revit and Grasshopper [44], a Visual Programming Language (VPL) platform of Rhino [45]
Atotal of ten types of insulation were selected as optimisation input, including conventional insulation materials such as cellulose, mineral wool, a collective of insulation made of fibres [79], expanded purposes polystyrene (EPS), rock wool, one special type of mineral wool [79], polyurethane foam (PUR) [8], fibreglass batt [80] and emerging insulation like flax [81], recycled wool [82], and wood wool [8]
Summary
The construction industry plays a prominent role in addressing energy use and emissions. In 2018, it was responsible for 36% of the total energy consumed and 39% of process-related carbon dioxide emissions [1]. Energy ensued from buildings can be categorised into two types; energy consumed at the operational stage and the energy capital of all building materials, referred to as embodied energy [2]. The consequence is that energy savings in the operational stage are achieved at the price of the accumulation of embodied energy [4]. Embodied energy accounts for a significant part in the total energy requirement [5]. Treloar [6] indicated that embodied energy is 20 to 50 times the annual operational energy for most buildings in Australia.
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