CEE Metrology Research

The CEE Metrology Research aims to deliver robust analysis and understanding of the actual performance of buildings, as a means to reduce the energy consumption, carbon emission and performance gap of the built environment.

Overview

The CEE metrology research bridges the use of monitored data, physical theory and statistical techniques (e.g. Bayesian inference) to deliver a robust and physically informed understanding of the thermophysical and energy performance of in-situ buildings. Our activities include:

• Instrumentation of buildings and building elements for primary data collection;
• Development of novel grey-box dynamic methods for the estimation of the thermophysycal performance of buildings and buildings elements.
• Implementation of families of thermal and hygrothermal models to describe the heat (and moisture) transfer across building elements to infer their thermophysical characteristics (g., U-value and thermal mass).

Implementation of families of whole-building models to estimate their heat losses.

Key findings

• Development of a novel Bayesian-based method to estimate the thermophysical properties and thermal structure of building elements (Biddulph et al. 2014; Gori et al. 2016).
  It significantly reduces the time required to obtain stable parameter estimates compared to conventional steady state techniques, in addition to delivering robust estimates outside the winter period while keeping the systematic error within an acceptable range.
• The “Two Thermal Mass” model proposed in Gori et al. (2016) allows the characterisation of the heat transfer at both the interior and exterior surfaces of a building element, enabling the investigation of the thermal structure of building elements.
• Potential applications include the use of in-situ measurements for the proposal of tailored and cost-effective refurbishment interventions aiming at reducing energy consumption while maximizing thermal comfort.