ABSTRACT

The most frequently used energy simulation programs in the building field are based on the method of response factors (REF) (Mitalas & Stephenson 1967) to assess the thermal energy demand of buildings. They assume a linear evolution of the temperature; however, this evolution is not linear empirically. The American tradition, pioneer in this modeling software, diverted attention from this inaccuracy as the American building tradition does not take into account issues such as inertia. Nevertheless, the inertia is of crucial importance for performing a rigorous study of the thermal behavior of the buildings in the field of vernacular architecture renovation. The paper proposes a mathematical model based on a second order shaping function to estimate the heat transfer calculation in walls. For the same sampling rate the parabolic shaping function gives better results than the linear one. The latter applies to the solutions with more mass even more notably.