Thermal Mass Advantages

1. The Use of Thermal Mass to Moderate Internal Environment

Thermal mass plays an important role in providing adequate comfort to occupants of the building space in commercial environments. The correct incorporation of the thermal mass will provide long term benefits and available design options should be examined and understood by the design team.
Increased need to provide high levels of energy efficiency in the design of the new buildings requires the use of the high performance building materials along with structure and systems design. The designers are met with many challenges to fulfil these requirements but some building materials provide certain advantages to improve energy efficiency both in the summer and winter.
Thermal mass relates

Incoming air is preheated in this way. The heating coils that are cast in to the slab provide a sufficient level of heating. Perimeter radiators are used occasionally to provide faster thermal response if necessary. The BRE building requires no ventilation at night during the winner months and only minimum amount of heating is supplied at that time to prevent frost.
If the internal temperature during the summer days rises above the set temperature the windows open automatically to provide cooling. Additionally borehole cooling systems and the stack fans may be used if required. During the night time the night ventilation is activated and the windows open. If that does not provide the sufficient amount of ventilation the stack fans are used to extract hot air from the building by drawing cool air form outside in.
The important aspect of the control system in the BER building is the fact that it can also be controlled manually. Occupants can control their local environment by the use of the remote

This approach superseded the simple calculations that were used previously and allowed to determine the more complex relationship between the form of the building, fabric and the climate conditions the building would be designed to operate in. This type of software allows the designer to expose their virtual building to a number of conditions and parameters to determine how the building would perform in real life. The impacts of the different inputs can be further analysed and therefore provide the most optimum solution.

2. References

1. D Braham, N Barnard, D Jaunzens,. Thermal mass in office buildings, An introduction. BRE Digest 454. London : CRC Ltd, March 2001. ISBN 1 86081 466 2.
2. Rory Walsh, Paul Kenny, Vivienne Brophy. Thermal Mass and Sustainable Building, Improving Energy Performance and Occupant Comfort. A practical guide for designers. s.l. : Irish Concrete Federation, 2006.
3. D Braham, N Barnard, D Jaunzens. Thermal mass in office buildings, Design criteria. BRE Digest 454 part 2. London : CRC Ltd, 2001. ISBN 1 86081 467 0.
4. Saulles, Tom de. Thermal Mass Explained. Thermal mass: What it is and how it’s used. s.l. : MPA-The Concrete Centre, 2012. ISBN 978-1-904818-71-7.
5. Publications, CIBSE. Environmental design. CIBSE Guide A. s.l. : CIBSE Publications, 2009. ISBN-13: