Innovative building envelopes with fibre-reinforced composite materials and BIPVs integrated technology: state of art and possible applications

The building envelope has a dominant impact on a building’s energy balance, and it plays an essential role towards the nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB) target. Global energy demand is continuously growing, with the building sector consuming one third of the total energy supply in developed countries and one-fourth in developing ones. The research aims to integrate new innovative sustainable materials (fibre-reinforced composite material) and renewable energy sources (PV) into certified building envelope system technologies. Façade systems represent generally the building skin, aiming to satisfy a growing complexity of functional demands such as the stringent green energy requirements given by most of the building codes and to ensure the weather resistance (i.e. energy-efficiency, wind load, air tightness and water penetration). Maintenance aspects and durability of the curtain walling kit are mainly also involved in accordance with the long-term performance of the individual components and materials as well as product assembly and environment. Based on scientific approach and integrated design, the use of new technologies improves the overall performance of the building envelope, including solutions and integrations with photovoltaic systems as part of a holistic “green” strategy. The state of art and the following discussion provide a wide overview of the main variables involved in FRP pultruded profiles production, installation and use. This in order to define tools, technical rules and testing methods suitable to assess the performances of the possible design solutions under specific requirements and boundary conditions. The building envelope system that integrates BIPVs with an innovative fibre-reinforced composite material – used such as frame, subframe or specific component - allows also to significantly reduce the thermal bridges, via its low values of thermal transmittance in comparison with the common construction materials used nowadays, contributing to the improvement of the energy efficiency of buildings. The environmental impact assessment will be considered as well, since the use of re-usable or recyclable building materials will be even more important in the next future (transition to a circular economy).