Browsing by Author "Vera, Sergio"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Assessment of fire reaction and fire resistance of Guadua angustifolia kunth bamboo
    (ELSEVIER SCI LTD, 2012) Mena, Josue; Vera, Sergio; Correal, Juan F.; Lopez, Mauricio
    The main challenge for construction industry today is sustainability. Bamboo has properties that make it sustainable, but its fire behavior remains unknown. This paper presents an exploratory research on fire behavior of Guadua angustifolia kunth (a.k.) bamboo. Fire reaction was assessed through critical heat flux for ignition and flame spread while fire resistance through charring rate and strength variation with temperature. Fire reaction fall within standard limits used for structural woods, while fire resistance results are higher than that of plywood. Based on these preliminary results. Guadua a.k. would be adequate as structural and indoor finishing building material. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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    Assessment of the Effect of Phase Change Material (PCM) Glazing on the Energy Consumption and Indoor Comfort of an Office in a Semiarid Climate
    (2021) Uribe, Daniel ; Vera, Sergio ; CEDEUS (Chile)
    Office buildings are usually characterized by low thermal inertia, which could cause underperformance in terms of energy consumption. Moreover, the use of large, glazed facades in office buildings can cause thermal and visual discomfort due to high solar heat gains and excessive daylight transmitted into the office space. Phase Change Materials (PCMs) integrated into glazing have arisen as an innovative strategy to increase thermal inertia and improve office buildings' energy performance and indoor comfort at a low cost. This paper aims to analyze the impact of PCM glazing on buildings' energy performance and occupants' thermal and visual comfort. The analysis is performed through a one-year real-scale experiment in two offices in Santiago, Chile, with an east-oriented facade and a window-to-wall ratio (WWR) of 56%. The results are analyzed on two timescales: seasonally and daily. Representative days in each season were selected to carry out the analysis. Regarding the energy consumption of the HVAC system, PCM glazing reduces energy consumption during summer and mid-seasons and significantly reduces the peak loads in summer. A meaningful improvement in thermal comfort is achieved due to the control of the mean radiant temperature for the whole year. Considering visual comfort, there is an improvement in the luminance distribution in winter and mid-season cold conditions.
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    Development and validation of a numerical heat transfer model for PCM glazing: Integration to EnergyPlus for office building energy performance applications
    (Elsevier Ltd, 2024) Uribe, Daniel; Vera, Sergio; Perino, Marco; CEDEUS (Chile)
    © 2024 Elsevier LtdGlazing filled with Phase Change Materials (PCMs) or PCM glazing arises as a strategy to improve the office buildings' energy performance by providing thermal inertia to glazed façades. PCM glazing can reduce office buildings' cooling energy consumption in warm climates. Literature shows a good understanding of PCM glazing thermophysical properties. However, nowadays, it is unfeasible to estimate the energy consumption of offices with PCM glazing based on annual energy simulations. Therefore, this paper aims to integrate a novel, developed, and validated PCM glazing heat transfer model for building energy performance applications into EnergyPlus. In order to do this, a numerical heat transfer model of a double-clear glazed filled with PCM based on literature is developed. This model is validated experimentally and integrated into EnergyPlus, a state-of-the-art building energy simulation tool. Annual simulations are carried out for an office room with different WWR, façade orientations, and PCMs in four climate conditions to show the model's capability to estimate the energy consumption and cooling peak load reductions. The results show that double-clear glazing filled with PCM can reduce the energy consumption of an office building up to 9.1 % and reduce the cooling peak loads up to 10.5 % compared to the same office building with a triple-clear glazing filled with argon. The best results were observed in warm climates with significant diurnal temperature variations.
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    Potential of Mid-Rise Social Residential Buildings to Reach Net Zero Energy Building Standard in Two Different Climates of Chile
    (International Building Performance Simulation Association, 2020) Tori Kendall, Felipe Andrés; Vera, Sergio; Bustamante Gómez, Waldo Enrique; Sills, Pablo; CEDEUS (Chile)
    The Net Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) are a real solution to reduce the energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated by the building sector. Thus, many developed countries have conducted different studies for the development of public policies that encourage the implementation of NZEB. Chile adopted as environmental goal for the coming years reducing the GHG emissions by 30%, but the instruments to accomplish them have not been clearly defined. The NZEB might be a key strategy to reduce the GHG emissions. However, there are no studies that evaluate the performance of NZEB in Chile. The aim of this research is to determine the potential of mid-rise social residential buildings to reach the NZEB standard in Santiago and La Serena. In particular, mid-rise social buildings are selected as representative for this study through the use of a multi-criteria matrix. The electric consumption of buildings and photovoltaic production are simulated in EnergyPlus. The optimizations of the energy efficiency measures and the configurations of the photovoltaic systems are carried out in GenOpt. The results show that mid-rise social residential buildings are very close to reach the NZEB standard and through the optimized energy efficiency measures, the electric consumption of the building is reduced by up to 28%. Therefore, mid-rise social residential buildings have potential to reach NZEB standard but other measures must be studied.