Monitoring system for the evaluation of the energetic behaviour of PCM containing walls

As dry assembled multi-layered walls very often suffer overheating in hot climates because of their low thermal inertia, the appropriate use of Phase Change Materials (PCM) inside the same walls can increase their thermal mass before they reach high temperatures (which they tend to do when irradiated by the sun) avoiding overheating. Two main experimental campaigns were car-ried out at the “Renewable Energies Outdoor Laboratory ” of the Polytechnic University of Marche (Ancona, Italy): the first outdoor ex-perimental campaign (2003) was aimed at test-ing and comparing the behaviour of seven dif-ferent PCM containing stratifications to a refer-ence dry assembled wall, while the second cam-paign (2004) focused on the behaviour of the two PCM containing walls which gave the best results during the previous test. In the second experimental campaign, the installation of a complicated air temperature control system al-lowed the task of maintaining internal air tem-peratures at a fixed value, in this way the differ-ences relative to the energetic behaviour be-tween the PCM containing walls and the refer-ence one were evaluated. 1