Influence of Italian Climatic Conditions on Performance of a 3D Printed Building Second-Skin Façade with 20% Gyroid Filling: Simulation Assessment

This study evaluates the influence of Italian climatic conditions on the performance of a 3D-printed Second-Skin Façade (SSF) installed as a retrofit action for office buildings. In particular, this paper first evaluates the thermal properties of a 3D-printed ASA (Acrylonitrile Styrene Acrylate) sample using the Hot Disk Thermal Constants Analyser TPS 1000. Then, various case studies, where a Second-Skin Façade is installed using the 3D-printed ASA material as the outer layer, were modeled in the dynamic simulation software TRNSYS 18. The study considers a typical Italian office building in four Italian cities under different climatic zones. The analysis is carried out in terms of primary energy savings, reduction of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, and visual comfort. The results allowed to estimate the potential benefits with respect to the reference case without the SSF, as well as the performance of the investigated material when integrated in an SSF system upon varying the boundary conditions. The simulation results indicated that the proposed SSF system can reduce the primary energy consumption (up to 17.8%), significantly decrease the equivalent CO2 emissions (up to 30.8 tCO2,eq), and improve the visual comfort (UDIuseful values up to 95.4%).