Cavity wall is often proposed in the building envelope design as a solution for improving the thermal comfort of the inhabitants and reducing the adverse condensation effects on the building fabric. In order to evaluate the thermal effect of ventilated air gaps on building energy demand and comfort, an experimental ventilated cavity wall has been built and tested. The cavity wall separates two ambients at different temperatures that are assumed to be constant over the time required to perform the experimental analysis.
The rainscreen principle is not new. It was proposed as early as the mid sixties by researchers of the Division of Building Research of the National Research Council of Canada and the basic principles were developed. It has been applied to certain exterior wall types but the performance of rainscreen walls remains largely unknown because of the absence of engineering data.
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