Thermal performance assessment of double hollow brick walls filled with hemp concrete insulation material through computational fluid dynamics analysis and dynamic thermal simulations

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Thermal insulation is the most widely used solution to reduce the energy consumption of buildings. In order to minimize the cost and time needed to build an insulated wall as well as to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, this manuscript proposes to incorporate a bio-based insulation material into the air cavities of hollow bricks constituting the external walls of buildings. Therefore, the aim of this paper deals with the assessment of the thermal performance of Moroccan external building envelope constituted of double hollow brick walls filled with hemp concrete and separated by a 5 cm air layer thickness. Three configurations composed of three types of hollow bricks were studied (8-, 12- and 16-holed bricks). Firstly, using numerical simulations based on a two-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method, a parametric study was conducted in order to determine which of the three configurations meet with the requirements imposed by the Moroccan thermal building regulation. In terms of thermal resistance R and thermal transmission coefficient U, results have shown that double brick walls with 12 and 16 hemp concrete filled holes were the only configurations meeting the requirements of Moroccan Thermal Regulation. Afterwards, the study was revolved at a whole building scale and a dynamic thermal simulation considering various internal parameters was performed using TRNSYS software. Furthermore, an economic and environmental analysis was conducted and a comparison with Moroccan thermal regulation shows that our results perfectly meet the requirements of this regulation and are more efficient from thermal, economic and environmental perspectives. Finally, the insulation technique used in this investigation can be widely applied around the World and similar thermal performances can be achieved for the case of different regions characterized by the same Mediterranean warm climate considered in this paper.