Energy and Buildings 43 (2011) 3704–3709 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Energy and Buildings j our na l ho me p age: www.elsevier.com/locate/enbuild New equipment for testing steady and transient thermal performance of multilayered building envelopes with PCM Alvaro de Gracia a , Camila Barreneche b , Mohammed M. Farid c , Luisa F. Cabeza a,∗ a GREA Innovació Concurrent, Universitat de Lleida, Edifici CREA, Pere de Cabrera s/n, 25001, Lleida, Spain b Department of Materials Science & Metallurgical Engineering, Universitat de Barcelona, Martí i Franqués 1-11, 08028, Barcelona, Spain c Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 22 July 2011 Received in revised form 26 August 2011 Accepted 4 October 2011 Keywords: Material testing Building sector Thermal transmittance Thermal mass PCM Latent heat Dynamic thermal response a b s t r a c t Thermal properties of the different building envelopes, such as thermal transmittance in steady state, heat storage capacity and dynamic thermal responses, must be taken into account during the design phase of buildings. The evaluation and measurement of these parameters in multilayered samples are difficult because of the irregular morphology of the used materials and the difficulty in providing the well-controlled environment needed for the measurements. A new equipment has been designed to measure the thermal response and heat capacity of composite walls of different materials simulating real building envelopes. The equipment presented in this paper was used to test the improvement in the thermal response of a building envelope due to the incorporation of PCM. This study is focused on wood structural panels attached to a gypsum board, which is either impregnated or not with PCM. The four edges of the com- posite sample are properly insulated to ensure one-dimensional heat flow. The two faces of the sample are exposed to controlled environments heated and cooled by copper coils with thermo stated water supplied by water baths. The measured surface heat fluxes at both surfaces of the sample and tempera- ture distribution in the sample provide accurate assessment to thermal mass and dynamic response of the composite wall, while the steady state measurements provide an accurate estimate of its effective thermal transmittance. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Energy consumption in the building sector comprises the 20–40% of total energy consumed, being above industry and trans- port sectors in EU and US [1]. Moreover, it has grown significantly in the last few years because of increasing users demand for com- fort. This increase in energy consumption, but also the rise in fuel price and increase in CO 2 emissions are promoting new policies for constructing more sustainable buildings. The materials used in the building envelopes (walls, ceilings and floors) must be well chosen depending on the weather and envi- ronmental conditions. Therefore, it is very important to specify and compare during the design phase of the building, the thermal prop- erties of the different possible construction systems, such as the thermal transmittance in steady state, the contact thermal resis- tance between the layers, the heat storage capacity of the envelope and its dynamic thermal response under different environmental conditions. ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 973003576; fax: +34 973003575. E-mail address: lcabeza@diei.udl.cat (L.F. Cabeza). Many authors have studied and compared the thermal behav- ior of different constructive materials used in building envelopes. Specially, the crucial importance of using insulation in the building envelopes has been widely studied and proved. Soubdhan et al. [2] compared four different roof construction under tropical weather conditions, using polystyrene, radiant barrier, fibber glass and no insulation. It was demonstrated that for this weather the radiative heat flux is predominant in the roofs over the conductive one. The use of insulation was also extensively studied by Swinton et al. [3], measuring the thermal performance over two years, of ten expanded polystyrene, two sprayed polyurethane foam, two min- eral fibber insulation, and two glass fibber insulation on the exterior basement walls of an experimental building. It was shown stable and sustained thermal performance of the sprayed polyurethane foam insulation over the two-year monitoring period. Furthermore, Yesilata and Turgut [4] measured, using the dynamic adiabatic tech- nique, the thermal properties of anisotropic building materials used as insulation. Even though the testing time was long, the dynamic adiabatic technique was found to be functional and robust to mea- sure the thermal performance of anisotropic insulation layers. Apart from the use of insulation in the building envelopes, sev- eral studies have been done to characterize and compare different 0378-7788/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2011.10.010