The effect of orientation and plant type on the thermal behaviour of living wall systems in buildings

Abstract

Living wall systems are the vegetated wall systems where growth layer is located behind the plant and integrated onto the wall. They started to be used widely due to their many benefits such as increasing the energy efficiency of the building. Living wall can contribute to wall’s thermal performance by its shading, insulation and wind protection effects. However, there are limited studies which is done by simulation to investigate its insulation effect. In the previous studies, its shading effect is usually simulated, and evaporation and transpiration were not taken into account which are the major effect of being a live mechanism. In this study, it is aimed to see the effect of living wall’s orientation and the plant types on interior thermal conditions, by using a microclimate simulation program ENVI-met. ENVI-met provides a vegetation model that simulates evapotranspiration and interaction between the outdoor microclimate with indoor climate. In this context, the temperature differences that occur between the wall layers and interior surface temperature of the living walls are compared with those of bare wall for two cities in Turkey which are representatives of hot and humid climate and temperate climate. Thus, it has been seen especially the west and south facades of the building and also the plant types according to their leaf area index (LAI) affect the efficiency of the building depending on the climate.