Thermal design optimization and analysis on heating load of rural buildings in northern China

The envelope of rural buildings has been lack of effective and reasonable thermal insulation method and therefore its energy consumption has always been high. In order to address this problem, this paper aims to optimize the thermal design of building envelope. The simulation using DesignBuilder software for modeling and analyzing, using the orthogonal experimental design method to study the effects of external wall, external window and roof on heating load, and optimal thermal insulation scheme was obtained, which was 100mm PUF (external wall), 6mm+12mm+6mm low-E glass (external window) and 100mm PUF (roof). Results revealed that the addition of sunspace can significantly reduce the heating load and thus the selection of window thermal insulation material is very important. Compared with the condition of highest heating load, the energy-efficient rate of optimal scheme reached to 21.4%. The results of this study will serve as the idea for optimal design of rural buildings envelope