Green wall impacts inside and outside buildings: experimental study

The experimental study of vegetated facades and their hygrothermal effects on heat loads is essential. Indeed, the complexity of thermal fluxes and airflows taking place within green walls modules under extreme climatic conditions is to date not mastered. In addition, phenomena related to buoyancy, street confinement, condensation, frost and sorption-desorption are not considered in most reliable models. This paper presents an experiment on green walls performed to apprehend their thermal and hydrological behavior and their impact inside and outside buildings. The experiment is based on a living wall set up on a reduced scale mockup of buildings and streets. Diurnal monitoring of temperature, humidity and heat fluxes variations near and within the living wall and a reference case enable us to analyze thermal effects of green facades. Measurements were performed in La Rochelle city in France. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.