Green solutions- climbing vegetation impact on building - energy balance element

Greenery integration in building envelope has not been deeply investigated issue yet, when improvement of energy balance for is taken into account. The large energy consumers - shopping malls are well suited for green walls exploitation due to share of blind walls on facade area. Beside of aesthetics here may be improved both: energy balance of building and - at urban level - the heat island effect. The climbing foliage was selected for its economic and technology efficiency. For engineering purposes, the quantification of thermal effects is the must. To quantify the green facade impact onto building facade energetic properties, a mathematical model of heat transfer through coupled foliage and construction wall is revoked. It was implemented in TRNSYS simulation framework and tested for its robustness. The expressions for modelling of heat accumulation in leaves and convection side the foliage were improved. For across Europe shopping malls retrofitting guidelines set up, the climatic/seasonal factor was included. Vegetation cycle of selected climbing plants' were modelled as varying through different environmental zones. The TRNSYS based model robustness was tested for different environmental conditions; the climate impact onto solar radiation transformation into heat on the wall and on the leaves is matched with plant vegetation cycle. To validate model's parameters, similar cycle was tested on dedicated laboratory rig. The dual climatic chamber and solar irradiation simulator were used to create virtual environment for two climatic zones. Validated TRNSYS model was used for preliminary case study: cross-European environmental and hardiness zones climatic impact onto virtual cubic building was investigated. The case study results present different techno-economical effectiveness of climbing foliage on the facade, when climatic constrains are varying. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.