Energy-Efficient Building Envelopes with Phase-Change Materials: New Understanding and Related Research

Thermal performance of building envelopes is important in improving building energy efficiency. This paper includes three parts: (1) It introduces our new understanding of developing optimized or ideal building envelopes based upon inverse problems and their solutions, which is helpful for energy efficient building envelope structure design and material development. (2) It reviews our recent research on developing energy-efficient building envelopes with phase-change materials, including the optimized thermal mass characteristics of building wall, novel phase-change material development, measurement method for thermal physical properties of phase-change material, and application of some prototype energy efficient building envelopes. (3) It puts forward some limitations of the available works and related research topics for future study.