Journal of
Faculty of Civil Engineering

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
6th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
CONTEMPORARY ACHIEVEMENTS IN CIVIL ENGINEERING 2018 , 2018.y., pp. 323-334

	DOI: 10.14415/konferencijaGFS2018.032
	UDC: 66.018.4:697
	CC-BY-SA 4.0 license
	Author : Topličić – Ćurčić, Gordana; Keković, Aleksandar; Grdić, Dušan; Đorić – Veljković, Snežana; Grdić, Zoran
	Summary:
	Design of energy efficient buildings is one of the main priorities of the civil engineering research community. During construction of new – energy efficient buildings, the design process and good knowledge of thermal properties of building materials are very important. New materials which have considerable impact on energy efficiency have been emerging on the market. One of the innovative materials are phase change materials (PCMs). Phase Change Materials are ideal products for thermal management solutions. This is because they store and release thermal energy during the process of melting and freezing (changing from one phase to another). When such a material freezes, it releases large amounts of energy in the form of latent heat of fusion, or energy of crystallisation. Conversely, when the material is melted, an equal amount of energy is absorbed from the immediate environment as it changes from solid to liquid phase. The use of phase change material (PCM) in building envelopment can increase the thermal inertia of the wall and decrease the fluctuation of the indoor air temperature, so as to improve the indoor thermal environment. It can also be used with cooling/heating system to storage energy during the night when the electricity price is low, and release energy during the day when the electricity price is high. So the use of PCM in building energy saving is of considerable interest in the last decades. The paper describes the mechanism of phase change materials action, and potential for using them in civil engineering.
	Keywords:
	Energy efficiency, innovative materials, Phase change materials, civil engineering, usage