Study on materials for building envelope considering energy

Abstract

There are plenty of alternative building materials introduced to construction industry in order to save energy. Although typical materials are used for construction, there is a trend to use alternative materials as sustainability has become an important topic in construction industry. But still there is confusion between energy and cost for selecting material for a building envelope while maintaining basic functions of the building envelope. Therefore, this study evaluates the different building materials in terms of life cycle energy and cost for local conditions. Ferro cement panels with coconut fibre filler is used as an alternative material, together with common building materials for the comparison. Proposed configuration has the lowest lifecycle energy and it is the most cost effective material. Also analysis implies that not only embodied energy but also operational energy is varied with use of different materials for building envelope.