Experimental Study on Performance of Smart Material in Structures

Smart Materials are introduced to fulfil the demand of high performance building. Among the different types of smart materials predominantly fascinating towards energy efficiency of buildings are Phase Change Materials (PCM), able to retort to thermal stimuli with a reversible transition between solid, liquid and gaseous states. Marco Casini [1] The PCM was installed longitudinally in to the cavities of hollow blocks with Expanded Polystyrene as filler by the process of Macro-encapsulation. The experimental set up consists of two nominally identical model house having a dimension of 6? x 4? x 5?.The thermal performance of two identical model house was evaluated experimentally with and without PCM by using Temperature sensor. The experimental result showed that using PCMs in model house sustain the inside temperature closer to the desired temperature for a longer time.