Application of Prefabricated Panels for the Energy Retrofit of Portuguese Residential Buildings Facades: A Case Study

This article aims to evaluate the potential application of prefabricated panels in energy retrofit of facades in the Portuguese building stock. The fundamentals of this study were part of Annex 50, which was an international ECBCS IEA project, with the purpose of developing an innovative concept of building renovation for the most representative buildings based on prefabricated systems. To analyze the potential application of energy retrofit using prefabricated panels, was important to know the reality of the existing building stock and its morphology. To know the reality of the building stock, an analysis was done based on the existing statistical data and to find the most representative residential buildings, target of the study, three criteria were defined: buildings built before 1990, with 2 to 6 floors and with renovation needs in the exterior envelope.

In the absence of statistical information about buildings morphology, a research work was done in the field. During the collection of data a methodology was developed in which each opening was classified according to a code with three parameters. In the end of the classification, 29 final codes were achieved and was verified that three types of panels have a higher probability of being applied.