Modelling Building Envelopes in order to assess and improve their Thermal Performance

It is of significant importance, for the health of building residents and the protection of the natural environment, to attain conditions of thermal comfort within buildings and reduce their energy demands for cooling or heating. In order to set up a sustainable built environment and prevent the waste of natural resources, a serious consideration of several vital factors is essential. These factors mainly concern the outdoor environment, the envelope surfaces and the indoor environment of buildings. The aim of this study is to illustrate the fundamental steps of a modelling approach, which allows the efficient design of building envelopes at the very early stages. The fundamentals of this approach are related with electrical circuits and the equivalent thermal-network models. The assessment of various architectural building design decisions, is based on node temperatures and branch heat flows, of the thermal model.