posted on 2015-11-02, 12:16authored byEirini Mantesi, Christina Hopfe, Jacqui Glass, Malcolm CookMalcolm Cook
Insulating Concrete Formwork (ICF) is classified among the site-based Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) and consists of hollow insulation blocks and cast in-situ concrete. ICF construction elements can achieve very low U-values and high levels of air-tightness. The aim of the study was to examine the inconsistency in the simulation results provided by five widely used Building Performance Simulation (BPS) tools when calculating the energy consumption and the thermal performance of ICF. Moreover, the paper aims to analyse the energy consumption of ICF when compared to low and high thermal mass construction methods. The results indicate that there is a divergence in the BPS predictions, which is more noticeable in the annual and peak heating demand. Moreover, simulation predictions indicate that the ICF building has the potential to reduce the annual and peak energy use significantly, when compared to a lightweight structure, but consumes slightly increased energy compared to a high mass building.
History
School
Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Published in
14th International Conference of the International Building Performance Simulation Association
Citation
MANTESI, E. ... et al, 2015. Assessment of ICF energy saving potential in whole building performance simulation tools. 14th International Conference of the International Building Performance Simulation Association, Hyderabad, India, 7th-9th December 2015.
Version
AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/