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- Anthropogenic heat (1)
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New methods for designing with phase change materials (PCM) could widen the range of applications of passive systems for indoor cooling in architecture. This paper investigates material and formal strategies for generative architectural design that support the thermal performance of PCM. Dendritic geometry of PCM encapsulation with a large surface area per unit volume is proposed for enhancement of the heat transfer between PCM and surroundings. The prototype of the PCM ceiling component is digitally designed, manufactured in glass and tested in an experimental set-up for thermal cycling. Correlations are made between geometric configurations and cooling performance of dendritic and spherical PCM containments. The presented methodology integrates tools and techniques from digital design and energy technology, with an aim to contribute to novel PCM-based concepts for local thermal regulation in architecture.
Design processes in architecture revolve around solid structures rather than
the energy flows surrounding them. The concepts and technologies of climate
control that have emerged in buildings since industrialisation, have only deepened
the distinctions between built structures and their thermal environments,
as knowledge domains split up between the disciplinary fields of design and
engineering. Intended for human comfort and centred on a mechanistic approach
to energy and efficiency, environmental ‘service systems’ are the prevailing way of
dealing with heat in buildings and are deeply implicated in the climate crisis.
Against the backdrop of increasing anthropogenic heat, the thesis sets out
to examine this separation and the dualities it has created, including those
between material and energy, design and environmental technology, solid and
fluid. Through the lens of historical and experimental study it searches out the
knowledge of thermodynamic processes in architectural design and asks how they
are sensed, mediated, and acted upon – questions which, bound up as they are with
the present, critical condition, are at once methodological and practical.
The experimental work focuses on phase change materials (PCMs) and the
thermal environments they create. These substances, such as ice, salt hydrates
or plant waxes, cannot be studied other than in transition. During their melting
and solidification, PCMs absorb, store or release heat, and modulate thermal
space depending on the surrounding temperature fluctuations and available
energies from the environment. The integration of PCMs into building elements
has been widely researched in the fields of mechanical engineering and building
energy technology. Due to the complex nature of phase change processes and the
fragmented nature of knowledge between disciplines, however, they have rarely
found their place in architectural design and research.
The experiments mark the shift from preliminary studies conducted in design
research to engineering methods involved in the three case studies. Various
methods for studying phase transitions are combined in a novel way: digital
design and glassmaking of the PCM elements, together with the experimental
and numerical study of their thermal behaviour. Creating resonances between the
analogue and the digital, structures and heat, the glass elements are designed to
encapsulate the PCM and to facilitate and mediate its thermal exchange with the
surroundings. As the cooling behaviour of the PCM showed great sensitivity to
the geometry of the encapsulations, attention turned to their complex, branching
morphologies, understood as a mode of exposure and continuity between the
‘body of the PCM’ and its environment. The final case study presents a prototype
of a cooling ceiling with the PCM, situating the processes of heat modulation
within the interior space of a building.
Heat modulation is proposed in the thesis as a material-thermal and an aesthetic
practice, bringing inside and outside climates into correlation, rather than
prescribing a specific performance. This notion equally reflects the generative,
‘structuring’ capacity of thermodynamic processes that temporally entangle
materials and energy flows. In the course of the experiments, it is argued that it is
precisely through phase changes that a thermal space can be created that is attuned
to climate and weather phenomena and to the temporal, rhythmic – ‘pulsating’ –
cycles of heat and cold in the environment.