Potential strategies offered by animals to implement in buildings'''' energy performance: Theory and practice

摘要

The strategies for thermal regulation and envir on mental control found in nature are countless. In this article, a parallelism between animals and building energy systems is defined in order to identJfy and emphasize the immediate opportunities that biomimicry offers for future research. The motivation was the need to find alternative solutions to tackle problems mainly in the efficiency of heating, ventilation and cooling systems. Due to the wide range of possibilities offered by animals, this study is largely limited to the strategies that cold-blooded animals have developed through evolutionary adaptation to the environment. The method used for the an a lysis is based on a soluti on-based approach. Firstly, differe nt animal thermoregulation strategies are defined (biological domain). Then the strategy is an a lyzed and classified into three categories. This classification is esse ntial in order to formulate the parallelism with building systems (transfer phase). The final step is to identify the potential implementation (technological domain).This approach has been seen to be useful in creating new research opportunities based on biomimicry. In addition, suitable solutions arising from multidisciplinary team research are presented as promising answers to the challenges that building energy systems face no wadays.