Development and Validation of a Numerical Model for Living Walls via Field Measurements and Evaluation of Thermal Performance on a Building Wall

Green walls may consist in green façades made up of traditional creepers or in living walls in which plants are sown on a vertical cladding installed on the building façade. A very detailed field measurement campaign was performed on a living wall with the aim to tune a numerical model for the evaluation of the heat flux reduction on the wall with a living wall installed on different orientations at different latitudes in the Mediterranean climate. The field measurements pointed out a significant difference between external surface temperatures of the bare and covered wall up to 20°C. The validation via field measurements of the living wall mathematical model pointed out a good reliability of the numerical model. The multiparametric analysis highlighted a very strong shading effect on the west-exposed wall. The lower the latitude the greater the living wall effect and the heat flux reduction up to 77% on the green wall facing west and installed at the lowest latitude among the ones considered.