Description
A novel material with tunable dynamic insulations, thermal energy storage skills, and structural properties is presented in this work. The so-presented NRG&STRUCT concrete is a porous concrete made of microencapsulated phase-change materials (mPCM) embedded within the cement-based mix. A strength-based theory accounting for the porosity together with a quality-based index, and the mPCM content are the most relevant parameters to control the structural and energy performance in an NRG&STRUCT concrete. The work thus presents the energy performance of a demo-building made of this material. Particularly, layer-wise graded NRG&STRUCT concrete are used in external walls. At each layer, the material is characterized by its strength index and mPCM content, which both play the role of design variables to be determined by solving an optimization problem where the objective function is the energy consumption for keeping the indoor thermal comfort, computed by EnergyPlus. These design variables are continuous, allowing the use of gradient-based optimization solvers. The structural stability of the energetically optimal solutions is forced via constraints on minimal density.
