Regional Cooling and Peak-Load Performance of Naturally Ventilated Cavity Walls in Representative U.S. Climate Zones
Date
2025-12-23
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Architecture
Abstract
Naturally ventilated cavity walls (VCWs) retrofit conventional cavity walls with vents that enable buoyancy- or wind-driven airflow and reduce cooling loads during summer. When closed, they retain the thermal performance of traditional walls. Previous studies evaluated VCWs under steady-state conditions but did not capture regional, transient solar heating effects. This study assesses VCW performance across major U.S. climate types using a transient 3D solar heating model for east-, south-, and west-facing façades in four representative cities. Simulated façade temperatures were validated using published measurements and then applied to a regression-based energy model to estimate cooling load reductions. Results show 30–40% savings for east/west façades and 10–20% for south façades, with monthly reductions exceeding 1.0 kWh/m2 in all regions. On-peak savings (3–7 PM) were at least 1.5× off-peak values, indicating strong peak-shaving capability. Overall, VCWs offer a low-cost, climate-adaptive retrofit strategy that improves façade energy performance and reduces peak cooling demand.
Description
This article was originally published in Architecture. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/architecture6010002
© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Keywords
ventilated cavity wall (VCW), building energy performance, cooling load reduction, peak-load reduction, computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
Citation
Na, R., Banawi, A., & Abbasnejad, B. (2026). Regional Cooling and Peak-Load Performance of Naturally Ventilated Cavity Walls in Representative U.S. Climate Zones. Architecture, 6(1), 2. https://doi.org/10.3390/architecture6010002