Evaluating dynamic thermal performance of building envelope components using small-scale calibrated hot box tests

Zhenglai Shen; Adam L. Brooks; Yawen He; Som S. Shrestha; Hongyu Zhou

doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2021.111342

Evaluating dynamic thermal performance of building envelope components using small-scale calibrated hot box tests

Zhenglai Shen, Adam L. Brooks, Yawen He, Som S. Shrestha, Hongyu Zhou

Building Envelope Materials Research

University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

The hot box test method has been applied to evaluate both the steady-state (U-value) and dynamic thermal properties of building envelopes. However, the high construction cost of full-scale hot box apparatus and the testing time required (usually several days) may prevent its wider adoption. To overcome the limitations of full-scale hot box tests, this paper proposes a novel method to evaluate the dynamic thermal performance of building envelope components using a small-scale calibrated hot box and scaled-down specimen. In this paper, the scaling relationships of thermal properties evaluated using a full-size specimen and a scaled-down specimen are established based on the Laplace transform of the heat transfer equations. In addition, dynamic thermal properties obtained from scaled-down experimental tests are compared to the values calculated by the EN ISO13768 (ISO) method. A small-scale hot box with a 355 mm × 355 mm metering area was constructed and calibrated to validate the correlations. Three scaled-down concrete sandwich wall panels were then tested and the scaling relationship was cross-validated using the experimental results, finite difference (FD) simulations, and the ISO method. The results indicate that the dynamic thermal properties obtained from a scaled-down hot box test can be correlated to its full-size counterpart when certain conditions are met. The scaled-down hot box test is demonstrated to be an effective yet economical alternative to a full-scale test with significantly reduced experimentation cost and turn-around time.

Original language	English
Article number	111342
Journal	Energy and Buildings
Volume	251
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2021.111342
State	Published - Nov 15 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier B.V.

Funding

This research is partially sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF CMMI-1954517 and 1663302). The funding supports from NSF is greatly appreciated. The authors would like to thank Mr. Dominic Hanna for his assistance during the experimental tests. This manuscript has been authored in part by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan.

Funders	Funder number
National Science Foundation	DE-AC05-00OR22725, 1663302, CMMI-1954517
U.S. Department of Energy

Keywords

Calibrated hot box test
Dynamic thermal performance
Scaled-down specimen

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10.1016/j.enbuild.2021.111342

Cite this

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abstract = "The hot box test method has been applied to evaluate both the steady-state (U-value) and dynamic thermal properties of building envelopes. However, the high construction cost of full-scale hot box apparatus and the testing time required (usually several days) may prevent its wider adoption. To overcome the limitations of full-scale hot box tests, this paper proposes a novel method to evaluate the dynamic thermal performance of building envelope components using a small-scale calibrated hot box and scaled-down specimen. In this paper, the scaling relationships of thermal properties evaluated using a full-size specimen and a scaled-down specimen are established based on the Laplace transform of the heat transfer equations. In addition, dynamic thermal properties obtained from scaled-down experimental tests are compared to the values calculated by the EN ISO13768 (ISO) method. A small-scale hot box with a 355 mm × 355 mm metering area was constructed and calibrated to validate the correlations. Three scaled-down concrete sandwich wall panels were then tested and the scaling relationship was cross-validated using the experimental results, finite difference (FD) simulations, and the ISO method. The results indicate that the dynamic thermal properties obtained from a scaled-down hot box test can be correlated to its full-size counterpart when certain conditions are met. The scaled-down hot box test is demonstrated to be an effective yet economical alternative to a full-scale test with significantly reduced experimentation cost and turn-around time.",

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Evaluating dynamic thermal performance of building envelope components using small-scale calibrated hot box tests

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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Keywords

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