With the development of the biomimicry approach, new and creative ideas have been established to solve problems in architectural design. In the designs based on this process, “nature” is used as a diverse data source for the transfer of these data to various processes, functions, materials, and structures. The primary purpose of this paper is to explore the development of biomimicry as an architectural approach, with a bibliometric review of research related to biomimicry and energy efficiency. Emphasis on the importance of the need for biomimicry in modern designs is another goal of this study. In this study, articles published in the Web of Science database (2010–2021) were analyzed. VOSviewer and SankeyMATIC software were used to represent the analysis results graphically. According to the results of this study, in addition to the inadequacy of biomimicry research, the need for further research became apparent. This review can serve as a reference for future studies to transfer natural phenomena to architecture in order to solve the problem of efficient energy consumption.

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Biomimicry for Energy-Efficient Building Design: A Bibliometric Analysis

Phase change materials (PCMs) integration into cement mortar is among the new studies of interest regarding modern energy-saving techniques and developing the thermal properties in buildings. This study aims to integrate microencapsulated-PCMs (micro-PCMs) with cement mortar at 0, 5, 10, and 15% to replace natural sand for thermal properties improvement of the building envelope. In addition, the effect of using micro-PCMs on mechanical, thermal properties, and PCMs leakage problems were studied. The cement mortars incorporated with micro-PCMs were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermal conductivity, and mechanical properties as (compressive, flexural, and tensile). The results indicate a decreasing trend of thermal conductivity values with the increase in PCMs content in the cementitious system with the percentages of 11, 21, and 30% for 5, 10, and 15% PCMs, respectively. Similarly, mechanical properties results also confirmed that integrating incorporating mortars with PCMs resulted in the reduction in the compressive strength by 22, 31, and 46%, respectively. Therefore, using the PCMs with cement mortar can build envelope applications to store thermal energy, provide the indoor temperature at a comfortable range, and reduce the consumption energy in buildings. 

Thermal and Mechanical Properties of Mortar Incorporated with Phase Change Materials (PCMs)

Phase change material (PCM) applied in buildings can significantly improve thermal comfort and realize building energy conservation. In recent years, double-layer shaped phase change wallboards (DLSPCWs) that depends on the latent heat absorption and release of two kinds of PCMs can effective control the indoor temperature fluctuation, and have been play an important role in improving the indoor thermal environment. The related researches show that, it is rare but necessary to optimize the DLSPCWs in different typical climate areas in order to further promote the application development of PCMs in buildings for energy conservation. Aimed this, fifty-four different DLSPCWs were constructed in this study by selecting different phase change thermal storage layer from four kinds of form-stable PCMs and changing the thickness of the layer to optimize the structure of DLSPCW in two typical climate areas, including severe cold area (Xining city, China) and hot summer and warm winter area (Haikou city, China) respectively. Comsol Multiphysics was used for heat transfer simulation and calculation of the DLSPCW in order to determine its best structure combination pattern for the two areas, and DesignBuilder for comparing and analyzing the building energy conservation effect when using the optimal DLSPCW in buildings. Compared with the ordinary wall, the optimized DLSPCW saved 14,198.96 kW·h electric energy during the heating period in Xining, while 18,816.62 kW·h electric energy in Haikou during the cooling period. The results proved that the optimum structure of the DLSPCW not only reduced the heating load and the cooling load but realized the maximum utilization of the PCMs. 

Cheli Hershcovich

Papers

Thermal performance of sculptured tiles for building envelopes