Investigating smart materials to improve building thermal conditioning systems
Climate change and the advent of smart materials, such as phase change materials (PCM) and shape memory materials (SMM), are the factors that led to the proposal of an investigation into the improvement of environmental conditioning systems. The objective of the study is to verify how to incorporate smart materials into passive or low-energy conditioning systems to improve building performance. The scope encompasses the current climate data under the AR6 intermediate scenario of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The study begins with monitoring a real building called EDEM to investigate the behavior of smart materials, also through laboratory tests and through the design of conditioning systems with such materials incorporated using energy simulation for different Brazilian climates and under a climate change scenario. It investigates the use of the phase change material through its thermal inertia properties according to the mixture of composites and resins to create the required shape memory for a passive or low energy consumption conditioning system. As we deal with conditioning systems, the context is the current Brazilian climate and the changes predicted by the IPCC that tend to expand the tropical savannah climate to what is currently humid subtropical. Systems designed with smart materials should present improvements when applied to the reference environment and then be evaluated by energy simulation with EnergyPlus in order to create metrics for the current and for a climate change scenario.