Research Projects Building Physics
4th Generation Watertightness
Up to now, three strategies have already been used to manage rain penetration through the building envelope: mass buffering, face-sealed or perfect barrier principle and rainscreen or drained principle.
Beyond the 2050 building stock utopia
Belgium has never had a national architecture museum or architecture center. At least since the mid-1980s, however, a diffuse landscape emerged of small and mid-sized platforms - organizations as well as gallery spaces - that put architecture on display.
Circular building solutions: a quantification of their environmental and financial impact
With the building sector being a substantial contributor in the European energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, there is a growing awareness of the need to renovate the existing building stock.
Circular construction: the Mobile unit
Bouwunie, Odisee university college, VDAB and Ghent University are working together to develop a mobile unit within the open call circular economy of Flanders Circular.
Construction nodes in the EPB-regulation - EP-bridge & PAThB2010
Each building has a large number of different construction nodes (e.g. wall-roof junctions) and many of those are unique, being detailed specifically for that building.
Convective heat transfer modelling in offices with night cooling
Doctoral dissertation Kim Goethals
Coupled Thermohydraulic and Biologic Modelling of Legionella Pneumophila Proliferation in Domestic Hot Water Systems
Doctoral dissertation Elisa Van Kenhove
Design Strategies for Residential Ventilation Systems
Doctoral dissertation Jelle Laverge
Development of a framework for automatic dynamic building energy simulations
The research group building physics and Indoor Climate of HoGent and the research group of building physics of UGent started in 2012 the IWT-TETRA project “Optimisation and cost management of zero-energy social massive and passive houses”, funded by the Institute for the Promotion of Innovations through Science and Technology in Flanders.
Development of a simulation tool for Duco Ventilation & Sun Control
In 2012 Duco Ventilation & Sun Control looked for support for the integration of its (new) ventilation components in an automatic natural/hybrid ventilation system.
ECO-Life
The ECO-Life project demonstrates the development of the zero-carbon social housing neighbourhood “Venning” in Kortrijk, from the conceptual phase to the first operational years. The Building Physics research group analyses the actual energy performance of the dwellings during construction works and during occupation.
EPB versus real energy use in high-performance houses
How accurately do official energy performance calculations assess the real energy use in high-performance houses? This question was investigated in a statistical study commissioned by the Flemish Energy Agency (VEA), analysing data on 537 dwellings: their building envelope and system characteristics and calculated energy performance reported in the Energy Performance of Buildings (EPB) database, the energy use collected by the energy utilities and socio-demographic and behavioural data from surveys of the inhabitants.
EPICOOL: revision EPB calculation method cooling and overheating
The EPICOOL-project, funded by the Brussels Institute for Environmental Protection, started in 2009. The project consortium took on the EPB calculation method for cooling and overheating.
EURECA: Effectively Upscaling the Renovation of Envelopes with a Circular Approach
Flanders has around 1,4 million apartments, more than half of them must be renovated in the short or medium term.
Holistic performance assessment of demand controlled ventilation concerning VOCs in the indoor environment
The new generation of residential ventilation systems, Demand Controlled Ventilation (DCV) systems, are systems that do not supply the nominal airflow continuously but are controlled by CO2 or humidity sensors in order to save energy.
hybridGEOTABS
hybridGEOTABS is a four year European research and innovation project that brought together a transdisciplinary team of 12 partners including SMEs, large industry and research institutes from various EU countries.
Imperfections in the building skin: detrimental for the hygrothermal performance?
Although moisture is one of the leading factors for building damage, water infiltration is barely taken into account in the current methods to evaluate a building skin.
Improving the predictive power of simplified residential space heating demand models : a field data and model driven study
Doctoral dissertation Marc Delghust
IR Thermography: to a reliable evaluation for the building envelope
Infrared thermography (IRT) is a non-destructive evaluation technique for the building envelope. By the visualisation of surface temperatures, it is possible to detect construction deficiencies e.g. thermal bridges, moisture problems, incomplete insulation of cavity walls etc. in a fast way in-situ.
IWT Living Lab Renovation
The purpose of the Proeftuin is to stimulate scalable and reproducible renovation concepts in order to obtain affordable building solutions. Research is being carried out on the basis of real renovation projects. The research unit Building Physics is a partner in three Proeftuin projects.
Mobble On The Move
Ghent University took part in the Solar Decathlon Europe 2019 competition with the energy-efficient and sustainable concept 'The Mobble'. This is a flexible building block that introduces a new way of building and living and stands for 'Modular Building Block'. The 'Mobble on the move' project is a follow-up to this successful participation, which was awarded with 5 prizes, including the first prize for Engineering & Construction.
Parametric atlas of construction nodes / thermal bridges
Thermal bridges can have an important impact on the energy performance of buildings. Therefore, in Belgium, a pragmatic approach was developed to take construction nodes into account in the official energy performance assessment of buildings.
PRO³ Prefab-Renovation Solutions for the tertiary sector
Today, ETICS, cavity-filling and interior insulation are popular renovation measures. However,these methods are typically used on a low-scale level and involves in-situ work.
Renovation of Historical Facades: The Rescue or the Kiss of Death?
Doctoral dissertation Klaas Calle
Retrofit cavity wall insulation (IWT TETRA-project)
Retrofit cavity wall insulation (CWI) has great potential for reducing the energy use in Flemish houses. This is due to the reduced complexity and costs of the procedure compared to interior and exterior retrofit wall insulation and to the vast amount of non-insulated cavity-walls in Flanders.