Papers by francesco iannone
This work focuses on natural ventilation controlled by a Building Automation System (BAS) with th... more This work focuses on natural ventilation controlled by a Building Automation System (BAS) with the aim of guarantee adequate levels of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in an existing building. The case study is a three-story school building, morphologically complex, located in the suburbs area of Bari, characterized by a Mediterranean climate. The simulations showed how the designed natural ventilation system allow to obtain adequate levels of thermal comfort and IAQ as the climatic conditions and internal energy supply vary, optimizing the ventilation flow rates in relation to the need to limit the energy consumption. In school buildings high levels of Indoor Air Quality are required for the specific susceptibility to airborne pollution of occupants, but most of the data published in the scientific literature indicate that classroom ventilation in many schools is still inadequate. The low investment costs and the easy implementation of the Building Automation Systems allow a widely applica...
Building & Management, 2019
Energy and Buildings, 2018
Abstract In order to reduce the energy consumption in buildings, more and more energy efficient t... more Abstract In order to reduce the energy consumption in buildings, more and more energy efficient technologies for the building-HVAC system have been developed. Several studies showed that occupant behaviour has a much larger influence on the energy performance of a building than the thermal process within the building facade. This underlines the need to investigate the influence of occupant behaviour on building performance. This paper presents the results of a questionnaire survey related to occupant behaviours and preferences in residential buildings. Multivariate regression analyses are conducted to outline main patterns and correlations between energy use, building characteristics and occupant behaviours. Results show a strong relationship between occupants’ actions and characteristics of the built environment – in particular the construction year of the building. Furthermore, occupants have a notable impact on building performance: the chosen set point temperature and the total hours of heating system utilization, which both increase with the age of the building, lead to an increase of the fuel consumption. In conclusion, occupant behaviour is affected by the characteristics of the building, which requires additional studies to increase our understanding of occupant behavioural patterns in existing and modern buildings.
Procedia Engineering, 2017
Procedia Engineering, 2017
Natural ventilation is one of the most efficient solutions to improve thermal comfort in building... more Natural ventilation is one of the most efficient solutions to improve thermal comfort in buildings, particularly for passive and hybrid cooling. This paper analyses the potential of building automation systems for ventilative cooling in residential buildings. In relation to internal and external temperature, an optimized control strategy of window opening is developed to ensure adequate levels of indoor thermal comfort, reducing energy consumption for cooling. In particular, the control of ventilation is calibrated by an optimized variable set-point and a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) method is adopted with objective function that minimizes the thermal discomfort hours. The PSO algorithm is implemented in MATLAB and integrated with TRNSYS energy simulation software. A case study focusing on an existing Italian typical building of the '60s, situated in the Mediterranean climatic context is presented. Thermal comfort analysis, according to the adaptive thermal comfort theory (EN 15251-2007), shows that the optimized control logics for natural ventilation determines a significant reduction of overheating discomfort in reference to the case with ventilation only for indoor air quality at fixed hours. Combining the passive cooling system with an active cooling, there are also reductions in energy consumptions for cooling. The results show how the proposed optimized control logics increase the potentialities of natural ventilation strategies to the improvement of energy and thermal performance of buildings, integrating or replacing the conventional efficiency strategies.
2016 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), 2016
This paper presents a building automation strategy for natural ventilation control and reducing b... more This paper presents a building automation strategy for natural ventilation control and reducing building energy consumption. An on-off control is proposed in order to manage the windows opening and realize a natural ventilation flow guaranteeing indoor thermal comfort. The control logic is based on activation thresholds that are optimized to reduce the discomfort for overheating and undercooling. In particular, the temperature comfort range dynamically varies according to the adaptive thermal comfort theory. To this aim, a co-simulation architecture is proposed: the thermal building behavior and ventilation dynamics are simulated by TRNFLOW within the TRNSYS software and a Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm is employed to optimize the thresholds of windows opening. A case study focusing on a residential building situated in the Mediterranean climatic context is presented: the thermal comfort analysis shows that the optimized control logic significantly reduces the overheating discomfort.
Il libro si rivolge ai progettisti di organismi edilizi attenti alle tematiche della sostenibilit... more Il libro si rivolge ai progettisti di organismi edilizi attenti alle tematiche della sostenibilità ambientale e interessati a declinarle secondo approcci integrali. È altresì indirizzato alle imprese di costruzione e agli altri stakeholders del settore edilizio che considerano la sostenibilità come driver propulsivo per le attività di nuova costruzione e di riqualificazione del costruito.
The architectural and technological design of buildings needs a performance-based approach that t... more The architectural and technological design of buildings needs a performance-based approach that takes into account the wider needs of the sustainability-oriented approach. Generally, building codes concerning the ra-tional use of energy, set limits for the energy needs in winter that are evaluated by using sim-plified conventional conditions. In the Mediterranean area the energy needs in summer are significant and therefore energy saving strategies require the evaluations of building energy loads to be extended to cover the whole year. A wider perspective of the en-ergy problems suggests the evaluation of energy needs over the whole building's life cycle, in-volving production of building components (embodied energy), transport, construction processes, and the energy consumption concern-ing the life of the buildings life including main-tenance, demolition or renovation. As a case study, in this paper we present the project of a residential complex for the elderly, located in And...
it is well known that in Mediterranean regions, natural ventilation can offer an important contri... more it is well known that in Mediterranean regions, natural ventilation can offer an important contribution to building design, in conformity with the criteria of sustainability. Technological and architectural design has a fundamental role in the operation of natural ventilation systems; the building form and the details of the air outlet and inlet systems can remarkably effect ventilation performance. Theoretical and practical subjects demonstrate that natural ventilation system design cannot be made by using the 'principle of superposition of architectural effects' (designing by using this logic allows for the break down of the system into subsystems easier to understand and optimise). At the same time, simplified models can give results that are not adequate to the designer's needs. A method which allows projects to evolve in small increments beginning at the idea stage by using CFD codes is proposed. This method proceeds with an integrated logic that at the same time co...
A growing concern on the quality of urban environments has recently developed, due to the effects... more A growing concern on the quality of urban environments has recently developed, due to the effects of pollution on human health and on socio-economic systems and particularly caused by urban production mechanisms. Emission-reducing policies and new analytical models have been increasingly used to cope with such new environmental threats. Therefore, there is the need of integratine traditional quantitative (statistical, data managing, geographical, etc.) techniques with more complex tools, so as to provide decision makers with greater support to elaborate effective socio-environmental strategies. ECOURB research project, in which this paper is located, just deals with the identification of models to support urban environmental decisions. It is developed coherently with a general decision-support ICT-oriented architecture, through the analysis of multi-agent processes and the identification of variables, parameters, indicators useful in such system architectures. The present paper shows some results of this research project, in the building up of hybrid scenarios for the management of urban microclimates. Particularly, the reference context is represented by the management of indoor spaces in inhabited urban areas. Reflections are carried out on the case-study of public condo housing owned by the Institute of popular housing (IACP) in Bari, starting from a knowledge base collected through questionnaires. Such reflections take into particular account the role, the actions and the contributions of agent distributed in the inhabited context, in mutual, social and external relationships toward the reference physical environment (heat/cold management, urban heat islands, air quality etc.). The multi-agent approach allows the consideration of the complexity of such interactive relationships, so as to use them for the building up of social and environmental management models. Several agent types are taken into consideration, such as routinary human and artificial agents, as well as intelligent agents, so following taxonomical and logical approaches deriving from computer science and multi-agent theory. The modelling approach is characterized in the identification of single agents involved and in the definition of some logic rules of relation and behaviour. However, such model represents a preliminary study outcome, to be developed in the carrying out of the project with the extension and the deepening of the research project.
AEI 2008, 2008
This paper describes a software program developed to control smart building components (SBCs) and... more This paper describes a software program developed to control smart building components (SBCs) and improve comfort in buildings that use SBCs. In a virtual environment, this software package allows to control automatically the performance of buildings that include SBCs in their envelope and systems. The software has been calibrated on a simple model of a virtual building that is characterized by an SB intelligent skin, so that it is enabled to change its own characteristics and to modulate them in accordance to variability of boundary conditions. Internal comfort is guaranteed by hourly check and automatic management of the following elements: (a) Electrochromic glasses, (b) External vertical screening, (c) Internal vertical screening, (d) Ventilation grids, and (e) Radiant floor heating system.
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Papers by francesco iannone