Thermoregulative building envelope unit design with biomimetic design methodology

It is one of the first needs of human beings to have a healthy body temperature in order to survive. In meeting this need with accommodation, the concept of thermal comfort emerges. Natural gas, coal, oil, and alternatively electrical energy, which are among the energy sources used to provide thermal comfort, bring along some disadvantages such as having limited reserves, accessibility, inability to respond to current demand, distribution problem and causing global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. At this point, solar energy, which is the main energy source of living things in nature, is the best alternative to other energy sources in meeting the thermal comfort needs in buildings with its renewable and clean nature. In this study, the morphological features and adaptation behaviors of creatures living in extreme temperature conditions in nature to keep their body and nest temperatures in the optimum range were examined with biomimetic design methodology, and it was aimed to use solar energy to meet thermal needs by applying similar adaptation to buildings. Considering the ability of living things in nature to adapt to the current environmental conditions in order to ensure maximum efficiency with the effective use of energy, it has been seen that dynamism is necessary in order to apply similar adaptation to the buildings in the transition to different seasons. The dynamism is provided by the kinetic structure envelope design proposals obtained by combining morphological structures with smart materials. As with the existing building envelope designs, the building envelopes designed specifically for a specific climate have been innovated with a synthesizing approach, and design proposals that can be adapted to both cold and hot climates are presented with three different kinetic building envelope design proposals. In order to compare the thermal comfort performance among the designed kinetic building envelope units, solar thermal analysis was carried out using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) analysis with ANSYS Workbench analysis program and the building envelope unit designs showing the best performance in hot and cold climate conditions were determined.