# An innovative method to determine optimum insulation thickness based on non-uniform adaptive moving grid

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel non-uniform adaptive method for accurately determining optimal building insulation thickness, significantly reducing computational time while maintaining high accuracy in energy simulations.

## Contribution

It presents an innovative adaptive technique that improves simulation efficiency and accuracy in optimizing insulation thickness for building envelopes.

## Key findings

- Achieves 25% reduction in simulation run time.
- Provides high accuracy with fewer spatial nodes.
- Efficiently simulates heat conduction in building envelopes.

## Abstract

It is well known that thermal insulation is a leading strategy for reducing energy consumption associated to heating or cooling processes in buildings. Nevertheless, building insulation can generate high expenditures so that the selection of an optimum insulation thickness requires a detailed energy simulation as well as an economic analysis. In this way, the present study proposes an innovative non-uniform adaptive method to determine the optimal insulation thickness of external walls. First, the method is compared with a reference solution to properly understand the features of the method, which can provide high accuracy with less spatial nodes. Then, the adaptive method is used to simulate the transient heat conduction through the building envelope of buildings located in Brazil, where there is a large potential of energy reduction. Simulations have been efficiently carried out for different wall and roof configurations, showing that the innovative method efficiently provides a gain of 25% on the computer run time.