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In this paper, the energy and environmental impacts of a passive retrofit action, involving the installation, on an office building, of a second-skin system with the external layer made of a PVC-coated polyester fabric, were evaluated in terms of primary energy saving and carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. The primary energy consumption and the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions associated with the considered case studies were evaluated through the dynamic simulation software TRNSYS, across a whole year. The study was carried out considering five cities (Athens, Barcelona, Lisbon, Marseille and Naples) in five different countries in southern Europe upon varying the orientation of the two main façades of building (north-south and east-west orientation were considered). The office building was modeled in detail considering different construction characteristics upon varying the country. The simulation results highlight that the best results in terms of PES (equal to 22.4%) in Naples, while the best results in terms of CO2 (equal to 32.0 MgCO2,eq) were obtained when the building is located in Athens. In addition, the adoption of the proposed passive lightweight retrofit solution allowed the reduction of both cooling and thermal yearly energy demand up to 57.7% (Marseille) and 17.8% (Barcelona), respectively.

Plastic materials are increasingly becoming used in the building envelope, despite a lack of investigation on their effects. In this work, an extruded Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene panel has been tested as a second-skin layer in a ventilated facade system using a full-scale facility. The experimental results show that it is possible to achieve performances very similar to conventional materials. A numerical model has then been developed and used to investigate the performances of plastic and composite polymer panels as second-skin layers. The experimental data has been used to verify the behavior of the numerical model, from a thermal point of view, showing good reliability, with a root mean square error lower than 0.40 °C. This model has then been applied in different refurbishment cases upon varying: the polymer and the manufacturing technology (extruded or 3D-printed panels). Eight refurbishment case studies have been carried out on a typical office building located in Napoli (Italy), by means of a dynamic simulation software. The simulation results show that the proposed actions allow the reduction of the thermal and cooling energy demand (up to 6.9% and 3.1%, respectively), as well as the non-renewable primary energy consumption (up to 2.6%), in comparison to the reference case study.

A large amount of the Iranian energy demand is related to the building sector, mainly due to its obsolescence. In this paper, a second-skin system has been implemented as a retrofit action for an office building, evaluating the effect of a tensile material as second-skin in terms of primary energy saving, carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, and simple payback period. The analysis was carried out through numerical simulations across a whole year and for four Iranian cities (Tabriz, Teheran, Yazd, and Bandar Abbas) in four different climates (cold, temperate, hot-dry, and hot-wet), and with the building aligned at either north-south or east-west. Moreover, an economic analysis was carried out suggesting different incentive policies to promote building energy refurbishment. The simulation results highlighted a favorable orientation for buildings in Iran, suggesting a guideline for new constructions. Indeed, the best results were achieved for an east-west orientation of the building (up to a primary energy saving of 13.6% and reduction of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of 45.5 MgCO2,eq, in Yazd), with a decrease of the annual specific total (cooling and thermal) energy demand of 37.9 kWh/m2/year. The simple payback period values were also lower in the east-west orientation than the north-south one.