Behavior of a hollowed-wood ventilated façade during temperature changes

The Ventilated Façade System is a reasonably new technique, which was developed in Europe with the need of cost savings from the energy for cooling and heating of constructions. This system, established in the 1960’s, was an acknowledged as a constructive innovation both for esthetics and functional aims. Therefore, its use has spread not just during buildings’ retrofit but also in new constructions. Despite this fact, the applicability of wood with a hollow through it for ventilated façades remain quite unknown, as mainly of these façades are built with conventional materials such as concrete, lightweight concrete, brick, ceramic, wood panels and glasses. Due to that circumstance, this paper will simulate the behavior of a wood-hollowed when submitted to temperature variations (from 10 ºC to 30 ºC), in a small-scale (1:10). During the trials, the hollowed-wood sample was set in two directions: horizontal and vertical. In addition, trials were carried out with/without insulation material, and with cyclic and non-cyclic temperature variations. The result shows that hollowed-wood presents better behavior when accompanied with thermal insulation materials, reducing the rate, on which the temperature changes inside it. In addition, different orientations of the sample lead to slight difference comportment as well as the increase of the size of the hole in the wood.