Solar Building Design Research Articles

Breaking Boundaries in Wind Engineering: LSU WISE Open-Jet Facility Revolutionizes Solar Panel and Building Design

Experimental wind engineering is crucial for global structural design. This paper addresses limitations in aerodynamic testing, particularly in wall-bounded and small-scale scenarios. Open-jet testing, introduced as an advanced tool, overcomes turbulence modelling constraints, providing a more accurate representation of real-world conditions. The LSU WISE open-jet facility produces complete turbulence at a large scale, eliminating the need for corrections accompanied by partial turbulence simulation. This discovery holds significant implications in wind engineering and unsteady aerodynamics. Integrating photovoltaic panels with gable-roofed buildings may not require additional structural reinforcement, with a reduction in wind uplift forces by 45–63%. Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) offer design flexibility and aesthetic appeal despite potential higher upfront costs. Strategic interventions, such as design optimization and cost-effective installation methods, can enhance the economic viability of BIPV systems. Contrary to long-held beliefs, the findings challenge the notion that wind loads on structures with sharp corners are insensitive to Reynolds number. Open-jet testing produces higher peak pressures, providing real-world justification for actual damage in high-rise buildings. These results validate the author’s hypothesis regarding the underestimation of peak loads (in small-scale testing) leading to cladding failure in high-rise buildings. They emphasize the superiority of large-scale open-jet testing, underscoring its critical role in designing resilient structures. The LSU WISE open-jet facility’s unique capabilities hold immense promise for revolutionizing wind engineering, addressing grand challenges, and creating more resilient and sustainable infrastructure. Its applications span critical infrastructure, promising significant economic, societal, and educational impacts in STEM fields.

Energy-Saving Design Strategies of Zero-Energy Solar Buildings—A Case Study of the Third Solar Decathlon China

Solar Decathlon is a multi-disciplinary international competition that integrates energy-saving design strategies to design, build and operate zero-energy solar houses. This study focused on the 15 entries in the third Solar Decathlon China. It summarized their energy-saving design strategies into strategies of architectural design, equipment management, energy acquisition and intelligent regulation, and extracted a total of 22 key design elements. Based on the scoring results of the competition, this study analyzed the application of different design strategies with qualitative analysis; through quantitative analysis, 22 design elements were associated with the score, and the impact of different strategies on the score was comprehensively analyzed. As revealed in the data, design concept, functional structure and application type of renewable energy are significantly correlated with and have a great impact on the score; in contrast, building area and thermal buffer space are not significantly correlated with the score. On the basis of data analysis, this study provides a quantitative decision basis for the energy-saving design strategy of zero-energy buildings, and establishes an empirical model for the design of zero-energy solar buildings in Zhangbei County, Zhangjiakou City. This paper is helpful for the design practice and application of subsequent studies on ZEBs.

Project-based learning for proactive skills development of postgraduate students in solar energy building design digitalisation

PurposeProject-based learning is one of the most effective methods of transferring academic knowledge and skills to real-world situations in higher education. However, its effectiveness is not much investigated focusing on the students' narrative. This study aims at evaluating the students' experience and perspective on adopting project-based learning in master by research and doctoral programmes for proactive skills development.Design/methodology/approachThis study evaluates the self-reflection of 10 postgraduate students and their supervisor who have participated in developing a software tool for solar photovoltaics (PV) integrated building envelope design, management and the related education.FindingsFindings reveal that the students have effectively improved their knowledge on the subject via collaborating with the industry, self-learning/observation, peer learning, problem-solving and teamwork. Dividing the project into student-led tasks has improved the decision-making and leadership skills, risks identification, planning and time management skills. The overall experience has (1) built up confidence in students, (2) enhanced their creativity and critical thinking and (3) improved their proactive skills and context knowledge.Originality/valueA clear research gap can be seen in exploring the effectiveness of project-based learning for master by research and doctoral programmes, which mainly focus on extensive research. These programmes do not necessarily focus on developing students' proactive skills, which is the main requirement if they intend to work in the construction industry. This paper addresses the above research gap by demonstrating the effectiveness of project-based learning for developing the proactive skills in a research-intensive learning environment.

Retrofitting measures for climate resilience: Enhancing the solar performance of Malaysian school buildings with passive design concepts

Climate-sensitive school buildings can enhance students’ learning performance and reduce the building’s overall energy consumption. This paper reports on a post-occupancy study of contemporary school buildings in Malaysia, assessing problems of solar heat gain. The research aims to propose retrofitting measures based on passive design principles adapted specifically for the Malaysian tropical climate to strengthen the resilience of local school buildings in a global climate emergency. On-site measurements in two different schools provided the empirical basis for the design modifications. The monitoring procedure included site observations, extended temperature and humidity measurements, and daylight analysis. A virtual classroom model was generated based on the on-site measurements, and a parametric simulation study was conducted to evaluate the proposed retrofit measures’ effectiveness. The model variables were evaluated and compared to identify the passive design elements that significantly impact heat gains and thermal comfort. The results showed that increasing roof overhangs to 1500 mm for additional shading, sensitive selection of roof materials and colours of white-painted zinc roof, and reduction of window-to-wall ratio by 30% to the operable windows helps to reduce solar gains by 6% to improve comfort conditions within the classrooms. Overall, the study provided evidence of how passive solar building design would benefit the climate resilience of Malaysian schools.

Integrated design of solar photovoltaic power generation technology and building construction based on the Internet of Things

At the same time of economic development, the increasing scarcity of energy has had a great impact on people's development. People's production and life demand for electricity is also increasing rapidly, and solar power technology has received more and more attention. As a new energy source, solar energy has the advantages of environmental protection and sustainability, and it has no regional restrictions, can be used on-site, and designed to scale. Solar power generation is an important way to use solar energy. As the main component of the grid-connected power generation system, solar grid-connected inverters complete the tracking problem of the maximum power point in the photovoltaic array and transmit electrical energy to the grid through a set of control algorithms. The electrical energy is transmitted to the grid through the inverter, consistent with solar energy. In order to solve the problems of low integration, low energy efficiency, low reliability, high power consumption and lack of effective monitoring measures for solar energy devices. This article starts with the design of the solar cell integrated system, and through detailed analysis of the solar production system and building integrated planning, establishes the shadow radiant energy model of the solar cell system building electrical and solar cell system based on the Internet of Things, and designs an object-based Networked comprehensive auxiliary platform. The use of the Internet of Things and ZigBee wireless sensor network to study distributed solar energy devices and realize the joint design of solar energy devices and buildings is of great significance to the development of photovoltaic construction industry.

BUILDING PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF AN EDUCATIONAL BUILDING ON SUBTROPICAL HIGHLAND CLIMATE

Quito is located adjacent to the Equator. Average climatic conditions suggest passive solar building design strategies. Moreover, weather data confirmed that thermal comfort is presented only 16.2 % of the time. The analysis consisted of two stages. The first measured the influence of the parametric modification of ten building parameters. Second, a global sensitivity method was applied to the analysis of the previously predicted best performance configuration. Finally, the probability density array for choosing the best performance considered the percentage of contribution per parameter, versus the energy individual performance variation. Considering only construction elements the wall variation had the biggest contribution for decreasing energy loads with a mean reduction of 6.64 %. Moreover, windows and roof types had a parallel percentage of influence, which was about 3.09 %. Finally, floor types and installation of shading devices contributed to fewer energy savings, which on average was 2.20 %. This research has demonstrated that the use of BPA for energy optimization improves the level of accuracy at the moment of selecting the most influential circumstances and parameters on the building’s performance.

A novel disinfected Trombe wall for space heating and virus inactivation: Concept and performance investigation

Trombe wall is a simple and mature passive solar building design while its utilization of solar energy is limited to space heating. Aerosol transmission, as a potential transmission pathway of COVID-19, poses a serious threat to the public health especially in a closed indoor environment. The thermal disinfection of virus, which can be easily integrated into solar systems, seems to be a suitable method for controlling bioaerosols. Therefore, a novel disinfected Trombe wall for virus inactivation and space heating is proposed, providing a potential way to fight the current COVID-19 pandemic. After the proposal of the concept, its performance on space heating and virus inactivation was investigated through experimental and simulation methods. The main results were as follows: (1) The average thermal efficiency was 0.457 and the average indoor temperature was 20.7 ℃, 1.9 ℃ higher than the ambient temperature. (2) The maximum single-pass inactivation ratio was 0.893, 0.591 and 0.893 while the total production of clean air was 112.3, 63.8 and 114.7 m3 for SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV, respectively. (3) The increase of ambient temperature or solar irradiance may enhance the thermal efficiency while the former has little effect on the thermal disinfection process. (4) Extending the height or narrowing the thickness of the duct by 40% may contribute to an increase in total production of clean air by 510 m3 or 681 m3 per unit area during the heating seasons, but the later may cause a larger decrease (about 8%) in the heat gain of indoor air.

Passive solar energy building in mountain residence: Strategies and design

Mountain dwellings rely strongly on topographical conditions and are sometimes limited by terrain. A stratega is proposed for a passive solar building design in a Taihang mountainous area to utilize flexibly good sunshine and natural ventilation for the building and to organize a shady courtyard next to the mountain to form a cold source of the outdoor environment. This design has made a positive attempt for the application of passive solar building strategies to mountain dwellings.

The systems method as an educative tool for sustainable architecture design on the example of solar building design

The following article discusses the systems method as an educative tool for teaching sustainable architecture, including environmental design. Based on this method, a systemic model was created which provided a pillar of the learning process that concluded with a solar building project. This method offered a holistic view of the issues of pro-environmental design and led to an understanding of the relationship between the urban scale and the scale of the building. This aspect was considered crucial in teaching sustainable development architecture.The systems method has been recently used in China as a part of an environmental design course which only lasted for forty-eight lesson hours. The method proved to be an effective educational tool that enabled the obtaining of satisfactory design effects in such a short period of time. Additionally, the method was successful in conditions of cultural and linguistic barriers and a lack of prior preparation of students in the field of architectural design. The created systems model determined a precisely defined path for the teaching process in advance, as the specified issues included only those that were needed to achieve the set project goals. This approach resulted in the optimisation of teaching time, while ensuring the completeness of the assumed results.Experience gained from the didactic process leads to the conclusions that the systems method can be an adequate educative tool for solving multidisciplinary problems. Based on the example of solar building design, a systems method made it possible to indicate three main external factors that influence the design: macro-scale urban elements (district scale), micro-scale urban development (housing estate) and climatic conditions. The article also presents the possibilities of transforming the system model, in order to facilitate its more universal application, with reference to such issues as the topic of classes, as well as to the required scope and level of detail of the design task.

Integrated Design of Solar Energy Utilization and Building Based on PLC

At present, fossil energy consumption still occupies a dominant position in China’s energy consumption structure, and problems such as low energy consumption efficiency, high degree of carbonization and large environmental pollution persist for a long time. Under the background of advocating environmental protection and energy saving, the combination of solar energy and building is the inevitable trend of building energy saving development, and the integrated design of solar energy and building has become a concern of the architectural circles. With the deepening of people’s understanding of environmental problems and the further deterioration of energy problems, more and more buildings begin to use clean and energy-saving solar energy devices. At present, the construction and development of urban residential buildings in China are mainly multi-storey and high-rise buildings. Therefore, higher requirements are put forward for the application form and scale of solar water heating system in residential buildings. In this paper, according to the current situation of solar energy utilization in buildings in China, based on PLC (programmable logic controller), the paper puts forward some suggestions to promote the integrated design of solar energy buildings.

Thermal and cost analysis of various air filled double glazed reflective windows for energy efficient buildings

The enormous amount of energy is being consumed by buildings in an attempt to deliver thermal comfort in buildings. This paper aims at reducing/increasing the total solar heat gain through various combinations of double glazed reflective windows of buildings. The spectral characteristics of six reflective glasses namely bronze, green, grey, opal blue, sapphire blue and gold-reflective glasses at a normal angle of incidence by using UV-3600 Shimadzu spectrophotometer according to ASTM E 424 standards were experimentally measured. The solar optical properties of the glasses were deduced by developing a MATLAB code using spectral data which was obtained from experiments in the solar spectrum wavelength range of 300 nm–2500 nm. Thirty air-filled double-glazed reflective windows have been studied for both thermal and cost analysis in the Indian composite climatic zone (New Delhi 28.580 N, 77.200 E). The configuration C13 (Grey reflective glass-Air gap 10 mm-Gold reflective glass) is observed to be the best air-filled double glazed window from the highest annual cost savings ($ 79.29 per annum in SE direction) and lower payback period (1.42 years) point of views among thirty double-glazed reflective glasses studied. The results of this paper are useful in the design of sustainable passive solar buildings.

Coupling Effect of Space-Arrangement and Wall Thermal Resistance on Indoor Thermal Environment of Passive Solar Single-Family Building in Tibet

In areas where solar energy is abundant, such as the Tibetan plateau, passive solar buildings are attracting more and more attention and becoming a popular form of rural building. However, it is often difficult to achieve the satisfactory indoor thermal environment in a local rural passive solar single-family house. In order to improve the indoor thermal environment of passive solar buildings through building design, a systematic study of rural single-family buildings in Tibet was conducted. The basic parameters were investigated on the outdoor thermal environment, space-arrangement, envelope structure, and the indoor thermal environment. The building model considering space-arrangement modes was developed based on the survey data in multi-space passive solar buildings. The general physical and mathematical analysis models of multi-space passive solar buildings were established based on the heat transfer theory. Furthermore, the effects of space-arrangement and exterior wall thermal resistance on indoor air temperature were analyzed by numerical simulation. Results show that the indoor air temperature of the passive solar building is influenced by space-arrangement and wall thermal resistance together. When the space-arrangement of the building model was changed from “north-south through type” (mode a) to “through and separation combination” (mode b) and “north-south separation” (mode c), the indoor air temperature of the living room increased from 8.8 °C to 10.6 °C and 11.6 °C, with increases of 20.5% and 31.8%, respectively. In addition, equally increasing the thermal resistance of exterior walls in different orientations has different effects on the indoor air temperature. In the space-arrangement mode c, comparing with the temperature increment of the living room and bedroom caused by increasing thermal resistance of the south wall and north wall, the temperature increment of the living room caused by increasing thermal resistance of the east/west wall increased by 151.7% and 32.7%, and that of the bedroom increased by 609.1% and 239.1% respectively. This study can provide a reference for the optimal design of passive solar buildings in solar energy abundant areas.

Energy System Design and Optimization of a Solar Decathlon House

In architectural design, solar energy building has become the focus of many architects. In order to achieve the expected energy efficiency, the appropriate energy system should be configured during the design phase in accordance with the idea of building integrated design. In this paper, a house was designed for Solar Decathlon competition 2017 in China. In order to reach the target of energy balance, the design team employed BIPVs, solar heating system and several energy efficient technologies. By the use of simulation-based method, the energy system of the house was designed and optimized, so that the house can meet the requirements of “passive building” completely with reasonable building design and energy system configuration. The optimal design method described in this paper can provide effective solution and practical reference for the design of solar energy buildings.

Investigation of Different Window and Wall Materials for Solar Passive Building Design

The energy consumption associated with the cooling of the buildings is huge. In India buildings consume about 33% of country's power production for cooling and day lighting. The building enclosures such as walls, roofs and glasses play very vital role in reducing cooling loads in the buildings. The proper combination of window glass materials and wall materials can cut down the cooling costs extensively. In the present work, five different glass materials such as clear, bronze, grey, green and blue-green glass materials were selected and four different building materials such as burnt brick, cinder concrete, dense concrete and fly ash brick either side plastered with cement plaster were selected. Total twenty building models with various combinations of window glass and wall materials were designed in licensed Design builder 4.3.0.039 version and thermal analysis was carried out in Energy plus 8.1 software package. Thermal performance of various building models in four different climatic zones such as hot and dry, temperate, warm and humid and composite were investigated. From the results of the study, it is observed that fly ash brick wall building model with grey window glass is found to be energy efficient in all Indian climatic zones from the reduced cooling load point of view among all studied combinations in East, West, North and South orientations. From the results it is observed that the fly ash brick buildings with grey glass window is observed to be the most energy efficient combination for reducing cooling loads as they gain the least heat gain in south orientation (21.51 kWh) for Ahmedabad region. The results of the study help in designing energy efficient passive buildings.

Evolutionary-driven search for solar building models using LiDAR data

The search for solar buildings is one of the primary challenges in urban planning, especially when developing self-sustainable cities. This work uses an evolutionary approach for finding the optimal building model based on airborne Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) laser-scanned data, regarding solar potential. The method considers self-adaptive differential evolution for solving the constrained optimisation problem. In the experiments, the effect of different buildings’ layouts and design parameters were analysed regarding solar irradiance. Rectangular, T and L-shaped buildings were considered with various design parameters: position, building rotation, facades’ height, roof's height and slope. The experiments confirmed that the method can efficiently find the solar building design with maximum solar potential within constrained optimisation space.

Passive Solar Heating: Its Role in Architectural Shaping

A notion ‘passive solar building design’ has been arisen so far. In fact, it means heat flows management using architectural shaping. Architectural shaping is based on logic of heat flows generation and movement. Nowadays, an architectural form has no direct relation to a structure as close as it used to be before. Ways and means of energy supply step forward and become a significant forming factor.It has been analyzed herein how solar energy as an environmental factor affects architectural shaping and design.

Sensitivity analysis evaluating basic building geometry's effect on energy use

Building form does influence energy consumption. Designing low-energy architecture to minimize energy consumption requires thoughtful articulation of the shape and form of a building. The Architect's decision-making for more energy efficient building form is often based on rules of thumb. Historically, the rule of thumb regarding passive solar building design suggests that form and orientation matter to overall energy performance. The question of how much impact does form have varies between project to project, due to climate, location, and building size. However, evaluation of energy performance specifically relating to building form is difficult to quantify because of the large solution space, but nonetheless important to understand.The paper presents a methodology to evaluate building form to in order to compare energy consumption of geometric variations and material considerations through two types of sensitivity analyses. First, a review of related studies discussing energy and form are discussed, second the geometric methodology for vertical and horizontal proportion is described, and finally the linear screening local sensitivity index and a Morris global sensitivity results are reviewed. Findings compare geometric and material sensitivity, as well as the two different types of sensitivity analyses. Results indicate that both the vertical and horizontal geometric proportion is equally as sensitive as certain material aspects related to building energy use. Outcomes provide building designers clarity on the formal variations in the early design phase informing design decision-making.

From Solar Building Design to Net Zero Energy Buildings: Performance Insights of an Office Building

Net Zero-Energy Buildings Performance has gained more attention since the publication in 2010 of the EPBD recast [1]. Successful implementation of such an ambitious target depends on a great variety of factors. With a literature full of theoretical advice and a building industry rife with myths about the value of technologies, the present study intend to unveil an sustainable framework for sharing insights into NetZEB methodology applied in an Portuguese office building, Solar XXI, based on the authors experience in the ongoing research carried out within International Energy Agency SHC Task 40 - ECBCS Annex 52, “Towards Net Zero Energy Solar Buildings”

Integrated Design of Solar Water Heater System and High-Rise Residential Buildings

This paper analyzes the potential of the integration of solar water heater systems and high-rise residential buildings in a perspective of Ecological Civilization and raised issues specific to high-rise residential. Against the prospect the use of solar energy for high-rise residential buildings, the author points out the appropriate solution. The paper stresses that the process of the integration of high-rise residential and solar water heater systems, is a multi-phase technology system and building system integration process, is the inevitable trend to achieve ecological modern urban development.

Solar Hot System and Design of Buildings

Domestic solar hot water system, the use of the status quo and existing problems, by analyzing the solar water heating equipment and building integrated and building integrated design.