Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

For a building to provide the desired indoor environment at minimum cost in terms of energy and durability, the flow of heat, air, and moisture (HAM) across the building envelope must be understood, measured and controlled. The objectives of this research aim to increase the knowledge base and graduate professionals in the building envelope through the projects listed below: 1. The test method, initiated by the applicant to quantify for the first time "climatic load" and response relationships of wall systems subjected to water intrusion in the stud cavity, will be used and extended (i) to develop a common yardstick or standard whereby the relative performance of different building envelope configurations can be compared and improved and (ii) to move building envelope design further towards the engineering approach to enhance performance. 2. The data sets generated from the SRO (special research opportunity) will be used and extended to gain a better understanding of the interaction of the outdoor environment, the building envelope, and the indoor environment. 3. Development of tools will be continued using Information Technology (IT) to carry out comprehensive evaluations of building envelope and building systems. Such tools will be particularly useful to manufacturers of industrialized housing to establish and improve the performance of their products for world export. 4. Collaboration with Dr. Hua Ge will be continued to consolidate a Building Engineering base in Vancouver. The experimental results along with the results that will have been obtained from the above projects will be generalized by applying principles of existing analytical methods such as limit state design. The data will also be used to validate computer models in collaboration with colleagues who have developed such models in the past.