Almeida, ManuelaGarcia, ValdemarMaldonado, Eduardo2010-03-152010-03-151998Almeida, Manuela; Garcia, Valdemar; Maldonado, Eduardo (1998). The dependence of effective thermal heat capacity of non-homogeneous materials on location and climatic parameters. In Environmentally friendly cities : proceedings of PLEA 98 : passive and low energy architecture. Lisboa. p. 345-348http://hdl.handle.net/10198/2243The effective thermal heat capacity of construction materials depends strongly on the external conditions such as solar radiation and ambient air temperatures in contact with those elements. The combination of these factors has not been correctly quantified so far. This work also describes a means for determining the thermal performance of non-homogeneous, multi-layered elements: a detailed numerical method that simulates two-dimensional heat transfer situations that occur in typical Portuguese building construction elements, such as brick walls and slabs, was developed as a tool to quantify effective thermal capacity. Correlations factors between available solar radiation, ambient air temperatures and daily heat capacity were determined for a significant sample of construction elements to permit an easy and quick quantification of thermal heat capacity.engThermal heat capacityBuilding componentsNon-homogeneous materialsClimatic parametersDaily heat storageSolar radiationAmbient air temperaturesconference object