The BeTOP facility for performance testing of building systems

In the 1950s outdoor testing was the only way to gain more insight in the hygrothermal performance of buildings and their components. Therefore, the German Institute for Technical Physics (later renamed Institute for Building Physics) in Stuttgart decided to establish an outdoor testing field close to the German Alps where 20 test buildings made of different materials were setup and examined. Investigations at this field test site were so successful and the impact on the German construction sector was judged to be so positive that the originally provisional site soon became a permanent part of the institute. In the following decades more and more test buildings were added and the main research focus changed several times. The field tests have been increasingly used to validate computational simulation tools and to calibrate laboratory tests. However, even today the field tests cannot be completely replace by less costly means, because there are still phenomena that escape the most advanced simulation tools. For this reason, our field test site is still growing not only in size but also in relevance to the building practice. The paper summarizes the most important research topics dealt with on the past and it explains the current and future perspective of outdoor testing for the construction sector.

Murgul V., Pasetti M. (eds) International Scientific Conference Energy Management of Municipal Facilities and Sustainable Energy Technologies EMMFT-2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 982. Springer, Cham, 2009

The experimental assessment of building components represents a complex task, which involves the measurement and control of a wide number of physical phenomena. The use of the dynamic approach in outdoor real scale facilities provides a good representation of real operating systems, thanks to the inclusion of rather complex parameters, such as the occupants’ behaviour. However, the adoption of outdoor test solutions is usually characterized by a high uncertainty of the results, due to the complexity of the physical model and to the large variability of the input parameters. On the other hand, the use of indoor tests under controlled conditions has proved to be able to provide reliable results, thanks to the strict control of boundary conditions and of input parameters. The main drawback of this approach is represented by the scarce significance of the results, due to the rather simple modelling of the real behaviour of building physics. The aim of this paper is thus to present a test facility which represents a compromise between the dynamic control approach in real scale systems and the use of indoor tests under controlled conditions: the Building Envelopes ouTdoor Thermal Test (BEsT3) facility of the University of Brescia. Thanks to application of the dynamic behaviour of real environmental conditions to outdoor test cells with controlled indoor thermal parameters, the proposed system has proved to be able to provide reliable results, while also satisfactorily reproducing the conditions of real operating systems. Experimental studies have been conducted to assess three different window solutions under real dynamic conditions. Measured data have been used to create a correspondent numerical model designed in Energy Plus. The model has been validated with different dynamic simulations, in which the complexity of the parameters has been increased step by step. The numerical results provided by the model have shown a good correspondence with the real behaviour of the outdoor test cells.

2008

Building Simulation Conference proceedings

The dynamic thermal simulation has become a recognized instrument to predict building thermal behaviour. Many tools were developed in the last decades, which were independently validated, by considering different operating conditions, and rarely were directly compared in the same conditions. The objective of this work is to evaluate the prediction accuracy of the most popular building performance simulation tools, namely TRNSYS, EnergyPlus and IDA ICE, by means of a comparison of the simulated results and the experimental measurements detected under real operating conditions. For this issue, two different smallscale solar test boxes (STBs) with one glazed wall exposed to the outdoor environment of Rome was employed for the experimental investigation. The envelope of the reference STB is insulated and made by conventional materials. In the other case, the STB floor is equipped also with a commercial phase change material (PCM) panel. The results of this comparison have highlighted the most accurate mathematical models for the prediction of the dynamic thermal behaviour of the STB in the absence and presence of a PCM.

Civil Engineering Journal, 2021

The high cost of energy consumption in buildings highlights the importance of research focused on improving the energy efficiency of building’s envelope systems. It is important to characterize the real behavior of these systems to know the effectiveness in terms of energy reduction. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to characterize the thermal performance of facades based on experimental monitoring of outdoor test cells in tropical climate. To carry out this research, a case study was presented to compare two construction systems. One of them is a light façade (M1) and the other a reference façade (M2). A thermal simulation was performed for the opaque and glazed facades. In addition, several parameters were measured with different types of sensors, as well as environmental variables to evaluate the thermal and lighting behavior of multiple facades systems under real conditions. The findings show that light façade behavior was the opposite of what was expected, since by incorpora...

2001

Energies

The current European energy policies have an influence on the need to rehabilitate the housing stock in order to meet the objectives of the European Union. Most of this housing stock was built without any type of energy regulation in adverse technical and economic conditions and thus is now energetically obsolete. The major rehabilitation effort required must be approached through actions based on previous quantitative energy knowledge of the existing buildings in order to guarantee the efficiency of energy-retrofitted solutions. This assessment can be carried out through monitoring dwellings conditioned by use patterns; through simulation programs, which do not usually offer faithful representations of energy conditions; or by using test cells, which allow us to evaluate a controlled indoor environment without the influence of users. The objective of this paper is to present the design and performance of test cells as an experimental method for vertical facade analysis in order to tackle the problem of retrofitting residential buildings in a Mediterranean climate, taking into account energy and environment. With this equipment, efficiency and energy savings, as well as illumination and interior air quality, can be simultaneously and comprehensively evaluated.

Springer Tracts in Civil Engineering, 2016

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The increase in energy efficiency measures for residential construction in the Building Code of Australia has led to a shift from timber platform to slab on ground housing. Both industry and government have recognised the need to validate AccuRate's thermal simulation modelling of platform floored housing. The University of Tasmania in collaboration with the Wood & Forest Products Research Development Corporation and the Australian Greenhouse Office is undertaking research to validate empirically AccuRate in cool temperate climates. This is an ongoing project involving the construction and monitoring of thermal performance test cells and developer designed and constructed houses. There is an acknowledged shortage of appropriate data on platform floor housing to validate AccuRate. The problem facing platform floors is the perceived thermal limitations in cool temperate climates of Australia. In these regions the need for appropriate solutions of sub floor insulation is becoming urgent. The university has designed and constructed three thermal performance test cells on its Launceston Campus. Launceston has a wide diurnal temperature range in winter, which can assist in the close analysis of building fabric performance. The three thermal performance test cells include an un-enclosed perimeter platform floor, an enclosed perimeter platform floor and a concrete slab on ground floor. The test cells have been designed to allow for future fabric changes to floors, walls, windows and roofing. The platform floored test cells have allowed for the inclusion and modification of sub floor insulation. The designs examined international and national past practise.