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

建筑围护结构将室内与室外环境隔开，主要目的是为其居民创造一个舒适健康的室内气候，主要是通过控制热量、空气、蒸汽和液体流动。以可持续性和长寿命为目标，改造后的和新的建筑围护结构方案的设计面临的新挑战是在建筑围护结构的湿热和耐久性评估中考虑未来的室外环境条件，包括气候变化。尽管存在不同时间跨度和不同地点的全球气候变化数据，但未来的当地气候在很大程度上仍然未知。必须评估当地气候变化对建筑围护结构造成的影响的程度和相关风险。这项研究计划的总体目标是量化气候变化对建筑围护结构湿热和耐久性的影响，并确定应对和缓解这些影响的措施。开发一套反映不同气候情景下当地城市的未来气候文件是及时的，以便为建筑围护结构性能评估提供足够的边界条件。该计划的范围包括制定适当的方法，整合物理模型，提出工程工具，以便进行适当的设计，并确保建筑围护结构的长期性能，其中不确定性使用概率方法考虑。具体地说，这项研究计划将产生：1.确定未来当地气候的方法，以及确定加拿大三个气候区的当前和未来边界条件；2.巩固建筑围护结构的湿热行为，并为当前和未来气候下的复杂结构建立损害模型；3.评估气候变化对加拿大三个地点的三个现有建筑围护结构构成的风险；以及4.开发应对气候变化所需的有弹性的、新的或改进的建筑围护结构组件。该项目将在气候变化的背景下设计翻新的和新的建筑围护结构。然后，将设计出影响建筑物围护结构的风险。社会在其建筑环境方面面临着严峻的挑战，需要能够为建筑围护结构提出现实的工程解决方案的工程师。该项目将培训在建筑围护结构性能的高级建模以及评估气候变化带来的不确定性和风险方面具有独特专业知识的高素质人员。这种类型的专业知识在加拿大各地的建筑工程公司中受到了极大的追捧。

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.