The dynamic thermal energy simulation of historic buildings in Mediterranean climate: knowledge and simplification

Abstract

The European built heritage is strongly characterized by “historic buildings”. This built heritage represents an important cultural resource, constitutes a public good and testifies the community identity. The current challenge to reduce the consumption of energy resources is aimed at the requalification of this built heritage. To meet this challenge, energy analysis is increasingly being used also for historic buildings through complex building energy simulation program. Although their application to modern buildings leads to significant results, in the modelling of historic buildings there are numerous approximations and uncertainties relating to materials, thermal bridge, geometry and construction techniques which can lead to inaccurate results. Furthermore, the lack of input data and the complex geometries make even more difficult to determine the correct energy performance of the simulated built heritage. To the aim of investigates the validity, accuracy and reliability of Open BIM software, widely used by Architects and Engineers, based on the simple hourly method (EN ISO 52016-1), an energy analysis of historic building was performed. The work is intended to provide a calculation method to evaluate energy performance (heating, cooling, lighting, etc) of historic buildings (load bearing masonry structure with vaults) with the use of simple dynamic models, which comply with Italian energy laws and regulations, and to predict the energy saving potentials related to building retrofit actions.