BUILDING PHYSICS LABORATORIES

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The facilities of the Building Physics group include several laboratories.

Building Envelope Lab

The Building Envelope Lab is designed as a laboratory for the characterization of the interactions between the building envelope and the air conditioning and regulation system. The laboratory consists of a triple thermo-hygrometric-acoustic chamber for the assessment of the performance of envelope elements and emission and ventilation terminals under controlled steady-state and dynamic conditions. The laboratory allows to evaluate integrally both the energy performance and the quality of the indoor environment (IEQ).

HVAC System Lab

The HVAC System Lab is intended for the characterization of the performance in variable conditions of handling units and heat recovery systems present in ventilation systems both for scientific research purposes and on industrial commission. The laboratory consists of a test chamber and two independent air circuits capable of reproducing experimental conditions for the analysis of the performance of ventilation system components in stationary and dynamic regimes.

Built Environment Simulator Lab

The Built Environment Simulator is a building-scaled laboratory for the characterization under real-life conditions of the behaviours of the building and system in relation to the comfort of the occupants in all its dimensions (thermo-hygrometric, acoustic, visual and IAQ). The laboratory consists of configurable spaces in a wide range of environmental and application configurations in order to test specific envelope, internal layout or ventilation control solutions in real-life conditions.

Living Lab

Our living lab is set of twin university classrooms equipped with resident sensors for the evaluation of the Indoor Environmental Quality.

Acoustics Lab

The Acoustics Lab at unibz consists of two coupled reverberation chambers, with volumes of approx. 200 and 250 m³ respectively. The chambers are design to carry out tests on the acoustic emission of active system elements and to test sound absorption coefficient of materials under diffuse field conditions.

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Equipment

Besides the laboratories, the research group can rely on the availability of the following equipment:

• a hotbox incubator, a climatic chamber, a heat flow meter for the study of building envelope components;
• a test rig for mechanical ventilation component;
• pyranometers, a pyrheliometer, a sun-tracker and a sky-scanner for the measurement of solar irradiance;
• a pyrgeometer for the measurement of sky-vault infrared radiation (outdoor conditions measurement);
• air temperature, humidity and CO2 sensors, anemometers, lighting sensors and acoustic equipment for the measurement of indoor environmental comfort;
• a set of probes for the measurements of thermal comfort conditions for indoor environments;
• calibrated HDR camera, luminance meter, spectrophotometer for the assessment of the lighting environment;
• probes for the measurement of Indoor Air Quality (O3, NO, SO2, NO2, TVOC, CO2, CO, PM and CH2O);
• thermocouples, thermal resistances, heat flux meters and logging systems;
• equipment for acoustic measurements: dodecahedron, talk box, sound level meter, tapping machine, sound intensity probe, acoustic camera;
• thermal manikin Netwon.

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