Evaluating the Benefits of Exposing the Thermal Mass in Future Climate Scenarios to Reduce Overheating

Thermal mass has the benefit of regulating energy in buildings and generates potential savings in energy and CO2 emissions. The result of the effect of climate change will be more intense and longer periods of summer heat waves. Use of the building thermal mass can reduce overheating in summer and minimize the need for cooling energy, reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions. In many buildings, the thermal mass is hidden behind a suspended ceiling, avoiding the loading and unloading of the thermal mass. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of future climate scenarios in overheating and to evaluate the benefits of using thermal mass to reduce the overheating in those conditions. This study was based on dynamic thermal modeling to analyse the overheating performance of a test room with suspended ceiling and with the thermal mass exposed. The testing room was simulated for two emissions scenarios, high and medium, using weather files from the Prometheus project produced on the outputs of UKCP09 data for London Islington in the United Kingdom. The simulation results show that making use of the room thermal mass can reduce the number of occupied hours above 28ºC reduced by at least 35% for the baseline (1970s). Small reductions of overheating are shown for high and medium emission scenarios for 2080s projections. This study shows that the use thermal mass and night ventilation can provide a reduction in overheating in the short term. In the long term, 2080s, the use of the thermal mass has a minimal effect on the high number of overheating hours and a different strategy must be in place if overheating wants to be avoided due to higher outdoor temperatures