Hygrothermal and durability performance of building envelopes in the face of climate change

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The building envelope separates the indoor from the outdoor environment, primarily aiming to create a comfortable and healthy indoor climate for its inhabitants, mainly via control of the heat, air, vapor and liquid flows. Aiming for sustainability and long lifetime, a new challenge for the design of retrofitted and new building envelope solutions is to take into account future outdoor environmental conditions including climate change in the hygrothermal and durability assessment of building envelope. Although global climate change data exist for different timespans and locations, future local climates remain largely unknown. The magnitude and the related risks of the impacts on the building envelope posed by local climate change must be assessed. The general objective of this research program is to quantify the impact of climate change on the hygrothermal and durability performance of building envelopes and to identify coping and mitigation measures for these impacts. It is timely to develop a set of future climate files reflecting the local urban under different climate scenarios in order to provide the adequate boundary conditions for building envelope performance assessment. The scope of the program includes developing an adequate methodology, consolidating the physical models and proposing engineering tools allowing adequate design and ensuring long-term performance of building envelopes, where uncertainty is considered using a probabilistic approach. Specifically, this research program will yield: 1. A methodology for determining the future local climate and the determination of such present and future boundary conditions for three climatic zones in Canada, 2. A consolidation of building envelope hygrothermal behavior and damage modeling for complex configuration under present and future climate, 3. An assessment of the risks posed by climate change on three existing building envelopes for three Canadian locations, and 4. The development of resilient, new or improved, building envelope assemblies as required to face climate change. This program takes up the challenge of designing retrofitted and new building envelopes in the context of climate change. The risks of the impacts on the building envelope will then be devised. Society faces a critical challenge on its built environment and needs engineers that can propose realistic and engineered solutions for the building envelope. This program will train highly qualified personnel with a unique expertise in advanced modeling of building envelope performance and in evaluating uncertainties and risks posed by climate change. This type of expertise is heavily sought after by building engineering firms throughout Canada.