Abstract
Modular buildings offer faster construction process, provide better construction quality, allow reducing construction waste and are potentially flexible. Frames of modular units can be made of metal, timber, concrete or mixed materials but lightweight structures do not always allow erecting high-rise buildings and generally present a higher risk of overheating and/or overcooling. To reconcile these pros and cons, a typology of modular building called Slab was designed by a group of architects. The building is composed on the one hand of a permanent concrete structure named shelf-structure and on the other hand of several flexible removable timber modular units, also known as modules. The shelf-structure will host the common utility rooms and will serve as docking infrastructure for the housing modules. To provide high flexibility, the Slab building was designed to adapt to any orientation and location in Luxembourg. An energy concept and a HVAC systems design has been developed for the Slab building. Furthermore, a two-fold sustainability analysis was carried out. The first part of the analysis regards the determination of the minimum required wall thicknesses of the modules in accordance with Luxembourgish regulatory requirements, although the current regulation does not yet consider the Slab building typology. The second part, which is the subject of this paper, is thermal comfort assessment, more precisely, summertime overheating risk assessment of these modules, in compliance with Luxembourgish standard. In this regard, dynamic thermal simulations have been realized on two module variants; the first fulfills the passive house requirements, and the second—the current requirements for building permit application, which in principle corresponds to low energy house requirements. Simulations showed that with adequate solar shading and reinforced natural ventilation by window opening, overheating risk could be avoided for the normal residential use scenario for both module variants.
Highlights
From 1850–1900 to 2006–2015, the mean land surface air temperature increased by 1.53 ◦C, while the global mean surface temperature increased by 0.87 ◦C [1]
dynamic thermal simulations (DTS) showed that the worst-case orientation is window facing south-west, which was taken as reference for the results presented below
The current Luxembourgish regulation does not yet cover the Slab building typology, it was used as a basis for this assessment, whereby the worst-case scenarios were taken as reference
Summary
From 1850–1900 to 2006–2015, the mean land surface air temperature increased by 1.53 ◦C, while the global mean surface (land and ocean) temperature increased by 0.87 ◦C [1]. The worst-case scenario Oceans developed by Shell company jointly with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for instance, foresees a global average temperature rise of more than 2.5 ◦C from 1861–1880 to 2100 [2] Another worst-case scenario proposed by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) jointly with the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and Météo-France forecasts an increase of the global average temperature of. To face the challenges of climate change, the European Union adopted in 2007 ambitious objectives for 2020 These were the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, the increase of the share of renewable energy to 20% and the improvement by 20% in energy efficiency [4]. The lifecycle approach reveals that over 80% of greenhouse gas emissions take place during the operational phase of buildings (for heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting, appliances, and other applications) [5] In this context, regulations regarding energy performance of buildings are subsequently more demanding. To combine all these criteria, modular constructions could be a solution
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