Improving the resilience of ventilative cooling systems to reduce the risk of overheating in low energy commercial buildings in Ireland

Project Overview

The RESILIENCE Project is the first study of its kind in Ireland. Its aim is to systematically map and quantify how low or Nearly Zero Energy (i.e. nZEB) commercial building design, construction and operation in Ireland has affected or will affect indoor thermal environments in buildings that rely exclusively on passive strategies for the supply of fresh air and, more specifically, the removal of heat build-up that would otherwise lead to an unacceptable thermal experience for building occupants. To achieve this, the aim is to establish a national database of empirical indoor environmental data, (air and surface temperatures, humidity etc), for naturally ventilated (NV) commercial buildings, (low energy building in particular), that can be used to assess and quantify how existing modelling, prediction and compliance techniques perform in predicting overheating risk. The RESILIENCE project will address this performance assessment through the application of a novel methodology developed at MeSSO Research that demonstrates how to calibrate dynamic simulation of indoor air temperatures for Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) to a very high level of accuracy. The project will develop and integrate improved compliance methodologies for assessing risks to overheating. The RESILIENCE Project also addresses a number of key areas important to both the design and operational performance of NV systems in NZEBs to mitigate overheating risk (and also overcooling) such as a parameter optimisation study of factors influencing indoor environments and a systematic mapping study of control strategies. A set of recommendations for predicting air temperatures in NZEB environments will be proposed (in addition to recommendations already developed and published by MeSSO in this area).

The successful candidate will by supervised by Dr Paul D O’Sullivan and Dr Adam O’Donovan and will join a building physics and indoor environment team working on field measurements, experimental work and dynamic thermal modelling studies in real buildings. The aim of the PhD is to systematically map and quantify the resilience of indoor environments in the Irish non-domestic building stock to unintended consequences, such as excessive building overheating, arising from the relationship between a warming climate and aggressive low energy design practices specifically aimed at addressing building energy performance. The PhD Project will employ a range of dynamic building energy simulation techniques to investigate indoor environments in Irish buildings and develop new simplified predictions methods for assessing the thermal comfort within the spaces as well as quantifying the Ventilative Cooling potential of the buildings and climate, both now and in the future.

The role will be based primarily in the MeSSO Research Group (https://messo.cit.ie) in the Cork Institute of Technology (Ireland).

Qualifying requirements

• Minimum of a H21 in a third level qualification in Engineering or Physics (Level 8)
• Capability of working effectively within a team to achieve results and evidence of excellent organizational and communication/presentation skills. Proficient in documentation, presentation and project management software
• Keen desire to be innovative and help identify new strategies/technique to achieve goals. The successful candidate will have the ability to apply their expertise to solve complex problems using the data generated from the project
• Relevant research experience