Evaluation of the cooling potential of a vertical greenery system coupled to a building through an experimentally validated transient model

Despite several studies showed that Vertical Greenery Systems (VGSs) have relevant thermal benefits at urban and building scales, researches devoted to investigate the benefits of a green facade through detailed transient thermal simulations are scarce. Furthermore, a study comparing the effectiveness of different plant types is still missing. The present paper aims to fill such gaps by studying the effectiveness of a green façade to improve the thermal behaviour of a well-insulated lightweight building in the Mediterranean area, as well as the perceived indoor thermal conditions, based on both on-site experimental measurements and dynamic thermal simulations with a novel Type in TRNSYS validated through the monitoring campaign. To this aim, two identical full-scale prefabricated modules were installed and monitored at the University Campus of Catania (Italy), differing from each other because one of them hosted a climbing plant species in its west façade. The validated numerical model was then used to appraise the cooling effect of the green façade with two different plant species commonly used in Mediterranean countries (Trachelospermum Jasminoides and Hedera Helix namely). Results show that Hedera helix ensures the best performance when the foliage layer is at an intermediate state of its growing process, while under full foliage development the species investigated show almost the same performance. The incoming heat flux can be strongly attenuated, showing a quite flat daily profile, while the peak value of the internal and external surface temperature of the wall can be reduced by up to 1.6 °C and 10.5 °C, respectively.