New evaporative cooling integrated pneumatic clear foil cushion constructions

Inflated clear foil cushions, known as ETFE foil cushions have been recently developed as an alternative to glass for large-scale public buildings with large glazed areas. However Building envelopes clad with such cushions, such as the famous Eden project in UK need a dynamic system to control overheating in summer. A flowing liquid cooling film constructed within a clear multi-layer is presented in this paper. This enables rapid cooling effects on the building envelope. The system is based on an evaporative cooling system and is integrated with the inflated cushion to provide desired cooling effect eco-friendly. The implications of the forms and configurations of clear foil cushion constructions with and without a liquid cooling film in the overheating control are evaluated in this paper. Data were collected from a set of experiments to ascertain the effects of the foil material on heat transfer between the membranes. A comparative study of impacts of the results demonstrated that the thermal behaviour of a membrane skin depends mainly on convection and radiation heat transfer at its surfaces. These initial experimental results met the predictions from the analytic model, and are valuable for this novel dynamic cooling system design.