ABSTRACT

In the past and still often today, building regulations and standards don’t reflect the state-of-the art with respect to the performance assessment of buildings in terms of energy use and indoor climate. Because of the field of most of these regulations (transmission losses, energy demand for heating, …) and the typical used components, the assessment procedures were rather simple and not really a reflection of the physical behaviour (e.g. dynamic behaviour of buildings).

This situation is changing and this is for several reasons:

There is a clear shift from attention for heating energy to the total energy use (heating, cooling, lighting, fans, …);

There is increased attention for thermal comfort in summer, indoor air quality and lighting;

There is an increased availability of more complex components who often have variable characteristics (e.g. climate facades, demand controlled ventilation, …);

The new European Directive on Energy Performance will oblige all EU member states to have such assessment procedures for ALL buildings and ALL kind of components;

As a result, a whole range of needs can be identified whereby there clearly are important scientific challenges. The paper will in a first part focus on the major developments which have taken place during the last decades and in the second part discuss the challenges in relation to research in building physics.